


How to Make a Sandwich

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's Nickname is Cass (Supernatural), Destiel - Freeform, Lots of Angst, M/M, Mostly plot driven, No Smut, basically dean is missing and cass is worried, interdimensional travelling again, just cuties being cuties, the boys have feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:48:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24761869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dean Winchester is accidentally summoned through a rift to an alternate universe, similar to his own but with a lot of familiar faces, and he teams up with the prophet Kevin Tran and the archangel Michael in an attempt to stop the angels from taking over humanity.Basically Kevin is trying to be badass, Michael is kind but running low on batteries, Zachariah's an asshole, alternate world Castiel is violent and terrifying, Dean Two has a beard and a boring job, Sam is confused and upset, Cass doesn't know how to make a sandwich and he's really upset about it, and Dean is just trying to keep up.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Kevin Tran & Dean Winchester, Michael & Dean Winchester, Michael & Kevin Tran
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Side note for every chapter, Castiel's nickname is spelled Cass (and I use Cass's instead of Cass' in the possessive) because my blind friend reads this story with text-to-speech technology that can't pronounce "Cas" out loud correctly, sorry!

Curiosity had always been Dean Winchester's problem.

He wasn't very old when his father let him in on the big secret, monsters were real and they had to kill them. He wasn't very old at all when he learned how to handle a gun, how to toss a knife, hell, how to hotwire a car. He shot beer bottles with a rifle when he was still wearing velcro shoes. He picked up a gun when he couldn't even tie his shoes yet.

He never had to seek out information, or be aware of any secrets being kept from him. He kept secrets, he wasn't kept from them. So whenever something showed up in his life that he didn't know about, he just needed to. A guns blazing, childhood disappearing need to understand what was unable to be understood. 

John Winchester shielded Sam a lot longer, so he grew up having a more healthy relationship with the unknown. He faced an issue, he researched it until it became clear. But Dean would get frustrated. He'd be angry with himself, why didn't he know?

His problem became more controlled with age, but it only grew in intent. He would get more and more angry if he didn't see the answer lay out in front of him, if there was a new, unheard of beast they had to fight. But Dean knew he couldn't simply lose his temper every time he didn't understand something, so he shoved down that problem until it morphed from an anger at the unknown to an out of control curiosity.

Perhaps that's why Dean summoned Castiel all those years ago, because he couldn't leave well enough alone. But meeting Castiel only added fuel to the fire, because as time went on, he only found more and more unknown factors.

How to beat the devil? Who and where was God? Why was he falling in love with (and hiding his feelings for) an angel?

But curiosity was like a match, it burned when hit to the quick, then either fizzled out when it's goal was met, or burned away the entire stick. Dean had been burned by his matchbook curiosity too many times to count. He had lost people, perhaps not directly due to his love of playing with fire, but as a nasty side effect of burning your fingers.

So it was with instant regret that his curiosity resulted in another misfire one evening in the bunker as he went to go get more beers for Sam, Cass, and himself.

He strode along the familiar halls of the bunker, whistling something that had been part of the score of the movie they were currently watching, Tombstone, with Kurt Russel. He knew they probably hated him for making them rewatch yet another old western that they'd seen a thousand times before, but all their complaining only fueled his fire.

True, Dean felt he spent more time absently and unconsciously staring at Cass, and he enjoyed Castiel's occasional awkward impression of one of the lines that he'd actually used during their case in Dodge City more than he enjoyed the movie itself. If Sam noticed, he didn't say a word, and Dean would recognize if Cass noticed because he spent all that time staring right at him.

Push it down, Dean Winchester. Push down the unknown, all that curiosity that eats away at you. He was happy, he just had to let himself be happy with how things were right now.

He was only a few steps from the kitchen when a crackling sound was heard behind him. He spun on his heels at that all too familiar sound to be greeted with a rift. The rift, the floating, gold, tear in the fabric of the universe, stared at him, as if beckoning him to come forward.

No, Dean, no. Absolutely not. Do not go into the interdimensional doorway just because it's open. You don't just walk in any open door to a dark, scary building without knowing what's inside because that would be stupid. This was global scale stupid.

"Hey, guys!" Dean called, his voice unafraid and rather casual considering the situation. He thought he might have heard Sam shout something back with an annoyed tone, but he wasn't listening.

Don't do it. Don't walk into that rift, Dean Winchester, you absolute child. Don't pick up that gun if you can't even tie your damn shoes.

But Dean was not very good when it came to impulse control, and there was something through there, pulling him forward, whispering for him, like this rift had sought him out specifically. So, Dean, resident idiot, stepped through.

Big mistake.

He stepped into a large and unfamiliar room. It was fancy looking, well-lit and extremely tall. The ceilings held chandeliers and the walls were trimmed with gold. The entire space was like a ballroom from a Disney movie.

But it wasn't the manner of the room he was in that caught his attention, but who he saw there.

Dean had gotten pretty good at spotting unfamiliar angels because of the way they held themselves. They almost exclusively wore black and white and gray, always in formal clothing, and they walked like they had sticks up their asses, both literally and figuratively. They always had good posture that was a mix of uptight classical training and hard-bred soldiers.

But he didn't need to rely on his angel-vessel knowledge to spot the painfully familiar faces ahead of him.

There were four angels in the room, four very familiar angels, and one human knelt on the ground, the back of his shirt being held as if keeping him on his knees, hovered over a bowl that Dean recognized as spellwork, specifically Rowena's spellwork. It made sense, it was a spell that opened the rift he had walked through.

Of the four angels, two held angel blades, preparing for an altercation, one held down the human, and one stood up straighter than the others, hands folded behind his back expectantly, probably their leader.

Uriel held a blade, eyeing Dean with suspicion. He looked exactly how Dean remembered him. Alfie stood right beside him, no, Samandriel, not Alfie. Alfie worked at the weiner hut and wore funny shirts. This was the same vessel, but he wore a dark gray suit with a long black overcoat, and his hair was a little shorter.

The leader of the group was infuriatingly similar to the Zachariah Dean knew. Same receding hairline, same suit, same controlled expressions, same holier-than-those-already-holier-than-thou stance.

Perhaps he would be more frightened, or intrigued, or furious, had those three been the most weird thing in this room, but they weren't. Sure, angels who had long since been dead being back was unsettling, but not attention grabbing enough.

The human kneeling on the floor, looking horrified and a bit scratched up was none other than Kevin Tran. His hair was short, like it had been near the end, but the way he trembled and even the way he was dressed reminded Dean of that night in the mental hospital when they met.

It ached to see him, yet again afraid, yet again being used, yet again looking like he would rather be dead. But what hurt more was to see him here and breathing.

But nothing compared to how sick Dean felt seeing that the angel pushing him into the ground was Castiel. And damn it, he looked the same. There was nothing different about him than the Cass that he saw thirty seconds ago. Same suit, same tie, same trench coat, same damn shoes and haircut.

There was one difference he spotted. Castiel was holding Kevin down, and Dean could read the room here, and it was clear that this wasn't a party.

The worst part of all of these observations he made upon arriving was that nearly the second he went through, the rift behind him snapped closed. He even spun around, hearing that familiar whooshing sound, and saw nothing but the wall opposite him and a set of two large doors.

He looked back, unsure of what to say in this situation, and none of them made a move to say anything either.

"Hiya fellas." Dean settled on, his ever so "I'm fucked" charm manifesting into a big smile on his face. "Thanks for the invite to the angel party, but if you'd be so kind as to unlock that door again, I'd be much obliged." He knew that this was his classic, smile and joke until you're screwed behavior, but he noticed that none of these angels looked happy, which meant he was way past screwed.

Screwed didn't begin to cover it. He had no idea what his stupid curiosity dragged him into, and he wouldn't for a little while.

"Dean Winchester." Zachariah's tone was not the cheerful yet creepy spite that Dean was used to from his Zachariah, it was rather a dry observation. "That's… unexpected." Zachariah took a step forward, narrowing his eyes so that he could be observing him closer.

Zachariah didn't take his eyes off of Dean as he addressed the scared prophet. "Kevin, I see Dean Winchester, but tell me, where is Michael's weapon?"

Kevin began to stammer incoherently, and Castiel forcefully jerked him upward so that he was standing. He knew that the Cass he knew had strength that was something to be feared, but he'd never seen Cass quite so angry and… unfeeling.

"I did everything you asked, I swear. The portal was supposed to seek out Michael's weapon and draw it here, I don't know what went wrong, I swear, I did everything I could!"

Zachariah clicked his tongue and shut his eyes angrily. "If you did everything you could, then why the hell is Dean Winchester standing in front of me with no giant weapon?!" His voice reached familiar levels of fury. He took two steps back from Dean and cracked his knuckles, sighing dramatically. "Well, if you really did everything you could, I suppose there's nothing left for you to do. Castiel, kill the prophet."

A feeling ran through Dean like an electric shock. Here was Kevin, albeit not Dean's Kevin, about to be killed, again, by an angel, albeit not Dean's angel. And though no one in the room seemed to care for Dean personally and rather just saw him as a prop that Kevin apparently wrongly stole, he needed to do something.

Zachariah was within reaching distance, and he wasn't paying attention to the hunter at all. So before Castiel could smite Kevin, Dean grabbed Zachariah from behind, looping one arm tightly around his neck as the other grabbed the angel blade from his jacket (which, thank god he was still wearing during movie night otherwise he might be more screwed) and held it, tip pointing into Zachariah's chin. It was in the angle to go up and through him in the same way he killed Zachariah a decade ago.

"Let Kevin go and I won't kill Chuckles here." He threatened, an unwelcome but not previously unfelt emotion rose in his chest.

This whole situation was nuts. He was in an alternate universe, obviously, but considering he was somewhere inside, he had no clue just how alternate this particular universe was. But wherever he was, he didn't like that he was immediately greeted with a bunch of dead people. Half of the angels in this room wouldn't hesitate to kill him in his own world, so what did that say about them here? He did derive just a bit of unfettered glee at harming Zachariah again.

The look on the angels' faces was still just as cold and unfeeling as it had been, but now with a hint of surprise. Or maybe amusement? But he would stick with surprise.

Maybe this universe was extremely different, because it had been a long time since Dean managed to get an upper hand due to his enemies underestimating him. Underestimating the Winchesters sort of went away with their growing notoriety.

No one had spoken in response, but Castiel hadn't murdered Kevin yet either, so Zachariah's situation meant something. "Send Kevin over here and I'll let go of him, okay?" His demand came out a little softer as he directed it to Castiel, still holding onto Kevin's jacket collar. 

He had to remind himself that this wasn't Cass, it was Castiel. A warrior, a soldier, and a being that could kill Kevin with barely a thought. Dean had to acknowledge that he hadn't thought about just how powerful Cass could be until he was here posing a threat to him and Kevin Tran.

"Unexpected, coming from you Dean. I would say I'm surprised, but I had little to bank on, considering who knows what universe you came from. Do as he says, Castiel." Zachariah didn't sound worried in the slightest, and his command to Castiel was merely an absent-minded request. It worried him a bit to hear that he wasn't intimidating them, but it was eased by the image of Kevin being shoved forward, Castiel finally letting go. Kevin cautiously walked past the angels and Zachariah, his entire frame shaking.

Dean lowered the arm wrapped around Zachariah's neck to reach out for Kevin, gently pulling him closer to where he was standing. "Stay behind me." He whispered calmly as he finally lowered his blade and pushed Zachariah forward in one fast motion, anticipating a hasty retaliation. 

But Zachariah just turned to face Dean and Kevin, Dean's arm still lifted and stuck out to the side a bit in a loose protective gesture. Zachariah proceeded to brush out the wrinkles in his suit, looking disgusted.

"Ugh, I feel as though I've just been molested by a farmhand." He said in his trademark calm and condescending voice. "Now that that's over with, Uriel, Samandriel, Castiel, kill them both."

Dean spun his angel blade around in his hand as he glanced back at the doors he spotted earlier. Locking eyes with Kevin, he shouted "run!" And the two bolted away.

Castiel appeared instantly in front of Kevin (damn, of course these angels have their wings!) But Kevin's terror seemed to result in some wise escape maneuvers as he ducked beneath his arm and ran in a sporadic, zig zag pattern. Castiel kept appearing before him but he was never quite close enough.

Way to go Kevin, just as squirrely and resourceful as the one he knew.

Samandriel appeared before Dean, and Dean raised his arm to stab at him. Samandriel caught the arm, but Dean raised his knee to Samndriel's stomach, using his captured arm to drag him down so Dean could add extra strength. He knew that by his own brute force he wouldn't be able to hurt him, but he could distract him well-enough to grab his blade with his free hand and slash down on Samndriel's chest, causing him to let go in surprise.

He and Kevin simultaneously reached the double doors and pushed them open, to be greeted by Uriel standing just outside them.

"Sorry boys. Not today." He raised his arm and threw them further outside with that invisible force, sending the two hurtling into the grass. All Dean got from this was that it was nighttime, and he looked up to see a tall but ramshackle looking warehouse of sorts, so of course it was angel shit that made the inside room look so fancy.

Uriel pinned Dean under his foot and pulled out his blade, but was distracted by a fluttering sound of wings . Dean turned his head to see yet another familiar face instantly appear beside Kevin, gripping onto him, but swaying a little bit, as though he were drunk.

Dean could see Kevin make a split second decision, as he leaned over and reached for Dean, trying to grab him though he was just out of reach. Dean watched in fear as Uriel raised the blade and thrust it downwards, but a hand met his elbow before he Uriel could finish the blow and in an instant he was on the carpet floor of a dingy motel room, looking up at the light.

Both he and Kevin scrambled to their feet, and their seemingly unstable rescuer collapsed onto the bed he put them only a few feet away from. Kevin caught his legs that didn't quite make the landing, and he swung them on the mattress so that he wouldn't fall off. 

Dean was looking at the now completely unconscious form of his half-brother, Adam Milligan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note for every chapter, Castiel's nickname is spelled Cass (and I use Cass's instead of Cass' in the possessive) because my blind friend reads this story with text-to-speech technology that can't pronounce "Cas" out loud, sorry!

Uriel saw Michael, weak as he was, appear and grab the prophet. He realized his mistake in throwing them away from the building, that the damn prophet knew opening the doors would allow Michael to locate him again, but he had let his frustrations get the better of him. So he quickly attempted to finish off Dean Winchester, but the prophet snagged him on that angel ride the second before Uriel plunged his blade into the dirt.

He stood back up, his brothers all gathered around him now, Zachariah directly in front.

"Uriel, tell me, why didn't you throw them back in the room and relock the doors?" His voice was dry, which was far scarier than his sarcasm or even his anger.

"I apologize brother, but maybe,"

"There is no maybe. You idiots don't seem to realize what happened here tonight." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "See, we had a prophet, and not just any prophet, but the one working in tandem with Michael, and now Michael has him back. Said prophet didn't even find us Michael's weapon, instead he summoned an alternate world's Dean Winchester. You know, like the moron we had here? The one who managed to convince Anna to betray her own garrison, which, may I remind you, was the three of you?! And to make matters worse, if Kevin Tran was close to summoning the weapon at all or not, now we've added this alternate world Dean Winchester to the board, and he instantly protected the prophet. And evaded death by your hands." He glared menacingly at both Samandriel and Uriel.

"If I may, Dean Winchester is nothing but a flea. A cockroach. We can easily,"

"Really Uriel? Because if he was just a flea, why couldn't you manage to kill him? I suspect underestimating anyone involved with Michael is a poor idea, and now we've just handed Michael a new ally on a silver platter, one who may be a cockroach, but a cockroach who you couldn't manage to squash, Uriel, so don't you dare try and convince me that you did nothing wrong." He waved a finger in Uriel's face, his voice more distant and empty than he'd heard his superior in a very long time.

Zachariah finally just sighed and continued. "We cannot locate Michael, and we cannot locate his weapon, but he's weak. The second he slips up, and certainly one of them will, we may not have a way to kill Michael. But Kevin Tran and Dean Winchester have to go, and we don't need an archangel's weapon to do that, do we? Except for maybe you, Uriel."

In a moment, Zachariah thrust his angel blade into Uriel's neck, and the angels watched as their brother died and fell limp on the ground. Zachariah spun to face the remaining soldiers. 

"Castiel, I'm putting you in charge. You and Samandriel will find the humans and kill them. Or, maybe…" he tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps it's wise to keep one of them, maybe torture him for information. Certainly not the prophet, as long as Michael keeps handing him archangel grace he can make a spell for almost anything, and I don't want someone around who can literally perceive our actions before we've done them. Find the humans, kill Kevin, and bring Dean Winchester to me."

Castiel nodded firmly and Zachariah disappeared.

"Castiel, are we sure about this?"

"You aren't questioning a direct order, are you my brother?"

Samandriel was stooped to the ground, staring at his brother's charred wing marks. "Uriel was our brother."

"Uriel was a fool and a failure. I caution you to not be like him, or I will take care of you myself." Castiel's voice was hollow and dark.

Samandriel straightened up. "What is our plan of action?"

"We know nothing about this Dean Winchester, so I suggest we make a move on our own Winchesters first."

"How will we find them? Sam and Dean Winchester have been hiding, retired from hunting for years."

"Then we start with the angel who hid them." Castiel turned away from his dead brother, not even sparing him a last glance. "It's time to pay a visit to our dear sister."

-

Cass loved movie night. He loved when movie night was with Sam and Dean, or them plus Eileen or Bobby passing through, or if it was just him and Dean.

Okay, he favored those nights. Dean's behavior was slightly different when it was just the two of them, and it was the kind of different that Cass cherished.

Cass had a lot of questions that he had yet to answer about this world, like why were old westerns so appealing? How come sitting on a bed watching a movie with someone could make someone so happy? Why was he falling in love with (and hiding his feelings for) a human?

"Dean, you're not a cowboy." Sam huffed, throwing a piece of popcorn at his brother. The three of them were sitting in the den on the couch, with Dean in the middle as always.

"How dare you?" Dean gaped at his brother. "Do I need to remind you of our little time traveling adventure where I became the sheriff?"

Cass snorted out through his nose. "I specifically remember you wearing a poncho."

"It was not a poncho!"

"It kind of was, Dean."

"Okay, you two are way less fun when you team up against me, so I'm going to go get us some more beers." Dean stood up and stretched a bit as Sam and Cass high fived behind him.

Cass had to admit, he was always a little sad when Dean would get up during the movie. When they would sit down, they would leave plenty of space between each other, but during the movie they would somehow end up being completely pressed against each other, leg to leg, but it had to reset every time Cass or Dean stood up.

Dean walked out of the room and Cass actually started watching the movie for the first time since they started it, having lost the other thing he'd been distracted by this whole time.

If Sam noticed, he was either kind enough (for Cass) or smart enough (for Dean) not to say anything.

After a minute, they heard Dean's voice saying "hey guys!" and Sam rolled his eyes and shouted "hey yourself!" back to his brother.

When Dean didn't say anything else, Sam's eye roll reached new levels of sibling annoyance. "Fine, what is it?" He shouted, but again there was no more noise. In fact, the den was fairly close to the kitchen and Cass remembered hearing the friendly clink of beer bottles from his spot on the couch, but they weren't hearing anything.

"That's strange." Cass responded to Sam's slightly confused look. "Dean? Everything okay?" The angel called, looking out to the hallway.

This time when they got no response, they decided to investigate. But they walked the distance from the den to the kitchen and Dean just wasn't there.

"Dean?" Sam called out again, beginning to go down the halls toward the bedrooms, so Cass followed suit, calling for him as he walked down other halls in the bunker.

The two met again outside the kitchen, neither having been successful.

"Sam, I don't think he's in the bunker anymore. I can't sense him." 

"Cass, there's no way he could have left. We definitely would have heard the door."

"So where did he go?" They shared a look that was growing in worry. Cass felt a little panic flutter inside him, something that made him absently grab at his stomach.

This feeling was a foreboding emptiness. He had never felt this emptiness before, never. It was almost as if Dean ceased to even exist anymore.

-

Kevin collapsed into a sitting position on the bed next to Adam, his body still shaking so much he nearly missed and hit the floor.

Dean stared at Adam incredulously. He was trying to process everything that happened. He was watching Tombstone with his family, he stepped into a quickly disappearing rift that led him to reuniting with four dead people and a creepy evil version of his angel, and now here he was, again transported in an instant to a different spot, except a motel felt more comforting to him.

He looked up at Kevin with a billion questions, but decided to start easy. "You saved me, thank you."

Kevin let out a little breath, his body finally starting to still. "You saved me first."

"Still, you didn't have to save me."

"Neither did you." Kevin leaned forward a bit. Kevin was sitting on the bed and Dean was sitting, now upright, on the floor, with one arm on top of the mattress Adam was currently asleep on, but Dean didn't feel like he wanted to stand right now. Kevin narrowed his eyes. "Why did you save me?"

Dean shrugged. "You were in trouble."

Kevin bit his lip, eyeing him suspiciously. "You seemed quite familiar in that kind of situation. You looked at the angels, at me, like you knew them. Us." It was almost just a rhetorical statement, a verbal puzzle Kevin was piecing together. "You're from an alternate world, if you didn't know."

"Oh, trust me, I have some interdimensional travel under my belt. I shouldn't have gone through that rift at all, but it just felt like I needed to."

Kevin got a look on his face that Dean couldn't quite decipher. "Would you say you were drawn to the rift? Like you almost had no choice but to go through?"

"Actually yeah." This time it was Dean's turn to narrow his eyes at the prophet. "Why?"

"Well, I'm not sure how, but you must be a weapon of Michael. Maybe your Michael."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Look, it's hard to explain. "

"Well, now that I'm here I don't really know where else to go, so I say let's give it a shot."

Kevin buried his head in his hands and then pulled his face away, dragging his skin slowly with it. He looked exhausted. "Do you know who this is?" He gestured to Adam, sleeping beside them.

"Well, it's my half brother Adam, but considering all this Michael talk and the fact that I'm not Uriel's bitch, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that we've got another angelic rideshare situation." He glanced over at Adam, Michael, on the bed. "Though Mike here ain't looking so good."

"He's not good. He hasn't been ever since he and Gabriel fought." Kevin looked at Dean's raised eyebrow with another tired sigh. "I don't know how much you know about angels in your world, or how much is different here, but I'm a prophet of the Lord. And I saw a vision eight months ago of two archangels, Michael and Gabriel, fighting. In my vision, when Michael died, he took half of the world with him."

"You're saying Michael went nuclear?"

"Yes, only because Gabriel killed him with his own weapon. His Lance."

Kevin saw Dean's face drop, a darkness washing over him. Dean recalled Ramiel, a Prince of Hell, and the simple thought of him and everything about that night made his blood boil and his heart ache. 

He could see Cass barely able to lift his head, bloody and sweaty and weak and dying and nothing to be done about it. The way Cass looked around saying his last goodbyes and telling them he loved them, the way Dean wished he had a moment alone so he could kiss him-no, so he could… he could do something… god, fine, screw hiding things even from himself, it was so he could just kiss him and hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay.

Michael's Lance did that. It had the power to do that.

After a moment passed, Kevin continued. "I take it I don't need to explain what the Lance can do. But it just so happened that I'd already known I was a prophet, I'd been guided through it by the angel Anna, who had let slip that the archangel made to protect me should I ever be near a perceived threat was Michael. So I thought maybe I owed it to him, and the world, to warn him.

"Gabriel and Michael were fighting for control of heaven. Gabriel believed that heaven shouldn't serve mankind, and that angels should enter humanity and start taking control of their governments and all positions of power and leadership. Michael believed in free will, allowing humans to make their own mistakes and occasionally use divine intervention in response to prayers. Clearly Michael's way is more idealistic.

"So, when the time came for Gabriel to fight Michael, with my warning he was able to slay Gabriel, but not before Gabriel managed to turn Michael's weapon against him and slash him with it. He knew the only way to survive his wound was to destroy the Lance, but the minute Gabriel was defeated, his loyalists swarmed the place, so Michael sent me with the Lance and made me hide it away.

"I tried to break it, but only a demon or an angel can, or maybe a witch too, I'm not sure. But I was able to dent it with a spell intended to break it. It splintered, but remained intact. That splinter is the only thing keeping Michael from being consumed by his wound, but he's weak." Kevin motioned to the sleeping archangel once again. "I've been helping him as much as I can, but he's only getting worse. The only thing he can still do is fly, like you experienced, but he's getting worse and worse at that as well."

Dean rubbed the back of his neck, processing. The conflict was new, Gabriel hating humanity certainly was new too, but angel civil war? That was a rerun.

"So I'm gonna guess that Zachariah and his backup singers were Gabriel's?"

"Yeah, and all of Gabriel's angels are trying to find where I hid the Lance so they can finish off Michael and use it for themselves. But I was very careful in taking care of it. You'll understand if I don't tell you where it is."

"Hey, that's all you Kev. I just got here."

Kevin smiled sadly to himself. "No one's called me 'Kev' in a very long time."

"You haven't been a kid in a long time, huh?"

Kevin was a bit surprised at the honesty in Dean's question. He met the man's eyes, something sad and hollow in them. "What happened to the Kevin Tran you know? Based on how quickly you risked yourself to save me, I'll bet you were close."

Dean sighed and rubbed his head. "We were. He was family, but I sure as hell didn't do enough for him. He didn't get visions, but he could read the tablets." Kevin's face shifted and Dean just shook his head, not wanting to explain what the tablets were and hoping this Kevin would never have to deal with them. "He was tossed around by demons, angels, and even us, trying to get him to do something that was hard on him. I thought once we finally got him back we could keep him safe, but I was wrong."

"I don't understand." Kevin began slowly. "You said he was passed around to demons? Why didn't his archangel smite them?"

"Where I come from, we're no stranger to angelic war. By the time Kevin came into his powers all the archangels were out of commission. Raphael was dead, Michael and Lucifer were stuck in Lucifer's cage together, and Gabriel was being kidnapped and tortured by a Prince of Hell." Kevin's eyes bulged, surprised and interested by Dean's stories. "Now, Lucifer is dead, Michael is free but minding his own business, and Gabriel died saving us. He's a very different Gabriel than the one you talked about."

"Sounds like it."

Before Dean could say any more, the archangel on the bed stirred. He sat up, clutching at his stomach and groaning. He opened his eyes and saw Dean, and cast a confused glance at Kevin.

"It's okay, Michael. This is Dean Winchester, and he helped me escape."

"Oh." Michael gave a singular solemn nod to the hunter. "Thank you, I guess."

"No problem pal. You don't look so hot."

"I'm perfectly fine." Michael hissed as he attempted to stand, but Kevin caught his arm and pushed him back down.

"Not on my watch, you need rest."

"I'm an archangel, I don't rest."

"Well you're hurt, so you will rest. I won't hear anything else about it." Dean was a little surprised to hear Kevin's mothering tone.

Kevin Tran, the small, scared, trembling kid he knew and thought he saw in the ballroom, was now playing nurse to an archangel. An archangel that Dean hadn't always had pleasant run-ins with before, but at least he was in Adam's vessel. That made it easier considering he actually had positive memories of Michael as Adam, as opposed to Michael as Dean, or as that man from Apocalypse World, or the woman in Kansas City, or even when he was a younger version of his own father.

Michael looked at Kevin with a steady glare, but eventually sighed and merely propped himself up against the bed frame.

"Did they hurt you?" Michael's voice was soft, a lot more like the broken shell of Michael that opened a rift for Dean and Cass to go to Purgatory for the Leviathan Blossom. Dean had to admit that he was won over by Michael's obvious concern for Kevin.

"I'm alright, just a lot of getting up and down off the floor." Kevin responded lightly with a little laugh.

"I was worried they tortured you for the whereabouts of my Lance."

"They didn't, thank god, they tried to use me to locate it instead." Michael cocked his head in confusion. "They forced me to prepare a spell to open a rift to locate it, which is good news because it means our plan worked." Kevin turned to Dean. "Michael and I thought it would be best if we convinced the angels we hid the Lance in an alternate world, so we sent them looking there, so they wouldn't even think we were stupid enough to keep it here."

Dean laughed. "Let me guess, you were stupid enough?"

"Yeah, but it's buying us a lot more time."

Michael reached out and grabbed Kevin's arm. "Are you sure we should be telling him about all of this?"

Kevin sent both Dean and Michael a reassuring smile. "It's okay, I trust him. He's dealt with angels before, and he's dealt with your Lance before, right Dean?"

Again, the look on Dean's face remembering Cass dying in that barn was enough of an answer, but he nodded nonetheless. "I've dealt with every angel in that room before in my world, I've dealt with all the archangels where I come from too. You guys are in the height of the type of issue we dealt with back home years ago now. But it's still different here. Though I do have one question, if you know where the Lance is, why haven't you broken it yet?" The question was aimed at Michael, knowing Kevin can't break it.

He huffed a bit. "If I am reconnected with my Lance every angel will be informed of my presence. I can snap it in half but it will be too late. I need to stay away from it, to protect myself, to protect Kevin, and humankind in this world. If the angels get to either my Lance or myself, they will have nothing stopping them from controlling humanity."

"Angel dictatorship." Kevin mumbled, sounding annoyed. "Right now, we don't have any angels or demons on our side that would be willing to break it. Even if we could swing a demon powerful enough, it would have to be a crossroads demon to have that kind of power and still be expendable enough to offer up their services, and any demon would rather be tortured and die than risk the wrath of the entire rebelling Host of Heaven."

Dean nodded solemnly, trying to think this through. There was no doubt about it, he had to help them. This was an entire world on the brink of being run by dick angels like fucking Zachariah, and Dean would be damned if that happened.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note for every chapter, Castiel's nickname is spelled Cass (and I use Cass's instead of Cass' in the possessive) because my blind friend reads this story with text-to-speech technology that can't pronounce "Cas" out loud correctly, sorry!

"If they wanted you to create a rift to another world, how did you get away with him?" Michael pointed at Dean. "After all, a spell used to locate my weapon in any universe would require my grace, which you had, but you wouldn't have had the other ingredient necessary."

Kevin smiled. "Yeah, but they didn't know that. A normal rift tearing spell would require something that's been to the world you're going to, but I was basically flipping channels to find something specific, not the world itself, and without a piece of the Lance itself I was screwed, unless I broadened the search."

Michael's eyes widened in realization, one that Dean wasn't even close to understanding. "So you're saying that… well that makes no sense."

"What makes no sense. You want to clue me in here, guys?"

"It's hard to explain, because I don't really know how, but somehow the spell summoned you because it mistook you for a weapon." Kevin explained. "The benefit we have is that no angels besides Gabriel knew exactly what kind of weapon Michael's Lance is, so I didn't specify his Lance in the spell, and they didn't question it."

Dean paused, thinking me might actually understand what was going on for one measly moment of this terribly confusing evening. "So, for example, you might pull a Michael Sword?"

"I don't have a sword, I have a Lance."

"Capital S, Michael. Your Sword isn't a weapon, it's a,"

"Vessel." Michael interrupted. This time it was Kevin's turn to be confused, they seemed to be passing that baton between the three of them in a cycle. "I ignored and avoided the apocalypse here because I didn't care to get my father's attention, but there were prophetic rumors that my greatest weapon would be what was referred to as the Michael Sword, which is my one true vessel. But since I never let my brother out of his cage to begin with, I never sought out my Sword, and instead I asked for Adam's permission to be my vessel. I never even knew who it was."

"So, what you're saying is that Dean Winchester is your Sword?"

Michael looked at Dean for a response, and Dean was beginning to appreciate the advantage that his experience with angels gave him over their own. "Yeah, in my world when the apocalypse came, I was Michael's vessel and my brother Sam was Lucifer's. I never said yes and you took my half-brother Adam instead."

Both Kevin and Michael shared an estranged look at each other, not knowing that Adam was related to the Winchesters, even though Dean outright said it to Kevin only a few minutes ago. It was different with a Dean from another world than their own. They'd heard of the Winchesters, but they were rather dull here.

Michael locked eyes with Dean. "I suppose it makes sense now. Zachariah's garrison was one of the few that wanted the apocalypse. It's a bit old news at this point, considering none of my archangel brothers cared for it, but there were some desperate to pull it off. Dean Winchester was even raised from perdition, so now I'm assuming they must have known you were meant to be my vessel."

They noticed as another dark, sad look went across Dean's face at the phrasing of hell, but they opted not to ask any more questions than were necessary.

"Well, now I suppose I understand how my spell found you." Kevin's eyes looked regretful. "I'm sorry, Dean. I've basically stolen you from your home."

"Then we send him back. You just need a little more grace, right?" Michael looked like he was readying himself to stand, and Kevin looked ready to go back into mother-hen mode, but Dean saved them both the trouble.

"It isn't that simple. Those angels will be looking for me now, and I don't think they'll stop simply because I've gone home. Look, I've already defeated Zachariah where I come from, and I don't want to open my world to that again."

Another part of him that he didn't voice out loud wanted to say that it wasn't the entire truth. Sure, he didn't want to sicc an angry, violent garrison of mostly dead angels on his world or his family, but he also knew that regardless of consequence, nothing could make him leave this place until he had helped as much as he could. He didn't want to make Sam or Cass worry about him, but he couldn't go home real quick, he'd have no way back. And he wasn't abandoning an entire world of people to angelic tyranny. This place wasn't nearly as hard as Apocalypse World had been and they still managed to save people, so he would be damned if he'd give up here and now.

And here, he could protect Kevin and Michael. Michael certainly wasn't in a position to be protecting anybody, and he understood what Kevin could mean to somebody, he'd felt it himself and he failed. He wouldn't do it again, and he wouldn't let Michael feel what he felt.

For once, there might not be any sick twists or strings attached with Michael. There was always something, it seemed, but this Michael, though stubborn and slightly full of himself, wasn't as idiotic or self-centered as the other ones he'd encountered.

And who knew what taking even a sliver of Michael's grace would do to him. If Michael died, what would happen to Kevin? Would he get another archangel protecting him, which would have to be Raphael? Was this Raphael even still alive in this world? Was that even how prophets worked, or did you get one archangel? And what would happen to Kevin without one? He'd seen first hand exactly how poorly a world could treat Kevin Tran. And could he really risk the entire world's fate just to get home?

"Oh god, we need to get away!" Michael's voice suddenly sounded panicked as he grabbed onto Kevin's sleeve. It was weak, and Dean wasn't sure he could fly again if he wanted to. "The angels can track Dean down,"

"I have angel warding on my ribs." Dean interjected, immediately calming Michael. He moved toward the angel and took his hand, pressing it to his chest, doing all the work for him. Michael closed his eyes, searching for the warding. A small smile was pressed on his lips as he calmed, seeing it there. 

"This is clearly the work of an angel. You Winchesters seem to be good at befriending them."

"What do you mean?" Again the baton had been passed, back to Dean, and he was the confused one again. Damn.

"Whoever it was that pulled Dean from hell must have become friends with him, because he and his brother are warded too."

Kevin scoffed. "I haven't met any angels who are friendly in this world. Except Michael, of course." Kevin quickly added, seeing an offended look on his archangel's face. "Well, okay maybe one more."

"Who?"

-

"Anna. Long time." The red-headed angel held up her finger to silence the man who sat down in front of her, her brother and former member of her garrison, Castiel. She had a phone held up to her ear still.

"Yeah I'll see you in a few days. Same place in Battle Creek? Great. Bye." She put the phone back down on the table and stared at her brother.

Castiel rolled his eyes. "I hope that wasn't a human."

"Castiel, I see you haven't changed."

"You have." He mused, lifting up her coffee cup and eyeing its contents suspiciously. A waitress walked up with a pad of paper and as she opened her mouth Castiel raised a finger to silence her. "Be gone."

The waitress raised her eyebrows and muttered something unpleasant as she walked away.

"You have a way with words." Anna mused, snatching her coffee back.

"You don't need sustenance. You're an angel, you're better than this filth." Castiel looked bored and slightly disgusted.

"Are you calling my coffee filth, or the people who made it?" It was posed as a threat, but Castiel didn't feel intimidated by her in the slightest. Maybe before she brought up that wretched man from hell, when she was fierce and unafraid and his boss, but this Anna before him was feeble.

"You're practically a human yourself. The way you walk among them, as though they're your equals."

"They are, Castiel. We may have more power, but they're some of the most ingenious creations I've ever seen."

"You didn't feel that way when you killed Balthazar."

Anna's face became incredibly cold. "Balthazar's choice to fall and become human was his to make. So was taking his grace back to protect himself from you and I. But I am sorry about what happened to him. He wanted to kill Sam Winchester."

"That was perhaps the only good decision he could have come to. Balthazar was lost the moment he became human, like you were lost the second you laid a hand on Dean Winchester in hell." Anna's face darkened even more at Castiel's words.

"What do you care about the Winchesters all of a sudden Castiel? I have left Gabriel's angels alone, you shouldn't have any quarrel with me, or the Winchesters. They don't even hunt anymore. They live peaceful lives."

"Yes, peaceful. I'm sure. I don't believe you Anna, in fact I believe the Winchesters are trying to hunt down Gabriel's angels. That's unacceptable."

Anna almost looked offended. "I swear, Castiel, they're out. They wouldn't do anything to jeopardize the lives they live."

Castiel snorted out air through his nose. "Lives they've dedicated to killing angels."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it? You expect me to believe they've just rolled over? What incentive would they have to leave us alone?"

"They have families now Castiel! Sam Winchester lives with his college girlfriend Jessica, and Dean Winchester married a wonderful woman named, and they have a son named Ben." She leaned forward with an intimidating sneer on her face. "The Winchesters know more of family and love than you ever could Castiel, you're heartless and cold."

"You know Anna, I always knew you were incompetent, but this is a new level of your ignorance." Castiel stood up and smoothed out his coat. "Now I know where to find the Winchesters. You've been very helpful." He shot her a callous smile as he walked out of the cafe.

Only a foot out the door, Anna grabbed his sleeve, but he shrugged her off, continuing to the sidewalk.

"Castiel don't ignore me!" Castiel sighed and turned to face his sister, putting his hands in his pockets in a showing of his lack of emotion. She looked genuinely ashamed and scared. "Please, do not hurt them."

"I intend to do more than hurt them. I need to kill Dean Winchester, and maybe I can use his brother. There are things you don't know about Anna, and they don't concern you."

"Castiel please, I'm begging you. Please, if I ever meant anything to you as your sister, you will leave Dean Winchester alone."

Castiel laughed bitterly to himself, aware of just how little Anna knew of the situation, and having come to an embarrassing realization. "I knew it."

"Knew what?"

"You're in love with him, aren't you? An angel has fallen in love with Dean Winchester. How more pathetic can you possibly become?"

"Castiel…"

"No, Anna. I knew there was some real reason you rebelled against Gabriel. You pulled Dean Winchester from hell and ever since then he has become the most important thing in the world. Well let me tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to murder your precious hunter, and then I'll torture him. Because it just so happens that we've got a Dean with a visitor's pass." Castiel grabbed her shoulder and pulled her closer to him, firmly in place as Samandriel crept up behind her, unbeknownst to Anna. "I will murder the man you love twice. How does that feel?"

As Anna opened her mouth to respond, tears welling in her eyes, Samandriel stabbed her from behind, and Anna's grace flickered out as Castiel let go, allowing her body to collapse crumpled on the sidewalk.

Castiel and Samandriel walked away from the crowd beginning to notice a dead woman with large wing prints stretching from her on the ground. Castiel wondered if this new Dean from another world had an angel who raised him from perdition as well. He wondered if that angel loved him as much as Anna had.

Honestly he didn't care about the answer. If he knew the answer, he might be compelled to join Anna and Uriel.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean was appalled when he discovered from Kevin that hunters were few and far between in this world. Michael told him that Sam and Dean Winchester in this world were retired, family men. And apparently, Sam never lost Jess here either.

So when Dean saw an obvious ghost related death in the town they were staying in, he told Michael and Kevin he was going to take care of it. 

Michael was becoming impressed by this Dean. He was drawn to him by nature, likely because he was his Sword, but he didn't trust him at first. But it had been five days since Dean's arrival and Michael had to admit he was a breath of fresh air. He appreciated his comedy and the ease with which he spoke to Michael. It took Kevin months before he wasn't scared of Michael, but Dean never seemed to be intimidated in the least. He had to admit, he wasn't at his most intimidating, but still, it was different.

Dean was the other half of what humanity was. When he met Kevin, he showed him half of what made humanity so wonderful, and Dean fulfilled the rest. Kevin was gentle and caring and loyal and trusting. Dean was brave and determined and sacrificial and dedicated.

When Dean got bored in their motel he would convince them to go to cheap diners with him, and order them what he claimed were the best dishes on the menu, but they seemed to just be the greasiest. He put on movies and quoted all the lines. And Michael felt happy watching how happy it made Kevin. Dean's presence seemed to calm him down, perhaps because he was funny and sarcastic, and he seemed to care about Kevin a lot. He had told Michael about his own Kevin, but never what happened to him, but whatever it was, Dean apparently felt at fault.

It was easy to tell Kevin admired this Dean Winchester, he would ask him tons of questions about hunting. And when Dean said he was going to handle the ghost case, Michael was much less impressed because of what happened.

Dean was putting together the last of a rock-salt firing rifle that he scrambled together over the last day. He forgot how hard it was to just start hunting without Baby and all her contents, but a ghost was a ghost, and possibly the easiest thing to hunt considering how often he came across them. He went outside to load it into the back of Kevin's dorky blue 2007 Kia Rondo, perhaps the worst car Dean had ever been forced to drive. He took a minute to recount all the supplies he'd purchased on the last day that he didn't have on his person when he was called through the rift.

He closed the door and walked back inside in the middle of a heated argument.

"I can do what I want! You're not in charge of me, you know!"

"Kevin, I'm sorry, I may not be at my full capabilities but I can still kick your ass."

Dean raised his eyebrows at the colloquialism that Michael used so freely. "Boys, you want to tell me what's going on exactly?"

Michael marched up to Dean. "Dean, tell Kevin he can't come with you on your hunt."

"What?" Dean was sure his eyebrows would reach his hairline. "Kevin, you want to hunt? You?!"

"Why is that so hard for you guys to think huh? Michael, we've done nothing but hide and bounce from town to town. It's excruciatingly boring."

"Oh, I'm sorry that protecting you is boring. Please, send up a prayer to Zachariah, that's sure to break through your boredom."

"It's not the same thing!"

"It sounds like suicide either way."

"Guys!" Dean shouted, cutting through their fight. "Michael, can I talk to you outside?"

"Why? There's nothing to talk about. You couldn't manage to protect your own Kevin Tran. You want to get this one killed too Dean?"

Neither really got a good look at what his reaction was because Dean had immediately spun around and ran out the door. He threw himself in the driver's seat and pulled out of the parking lot wildly, paying no attention to the image of Kevin watching from the doorway of the motel, looking worried.

Kevin watched his car disappear around the corner before he twirled to face the archangel. "What the hell is wrong with you?" He asked, looking more disappointed and angry than Michael had ever seen. The prophet stomped across the room and locked himself in the bathroom.

Michael felt utterly defeated.

-

Dean spent a half an hour driving before he ran low on gas and had to stop. The gas station he pulled into was practically abandoned but it did the trick.

The entire ride he had tried to clear that image of Kevin from his mind, the one where he was slumped against the wall, eyes burned out of his head. He saw it when he went to sleep at night, and it had only gotten worse since being here.

When he sat back in the driver's seat he nearly fell out of the still open door when he saw Michael sitting in the passenger seat.

"Holy shit! Michael! What the fuck man?" He put a hand over his fast beating heart. "Give a guy a heads up next time!" It had been a long time since Dean had spent time with any angel who still had their wings. It made him sad to think of Cass for what seemed to be the millionth time since arriving, but he pushed it back, remembering the mood of the last conversation he had with Michael. "How did you,"

"Find you? I didn't, I tracked the car. I figured I'd need a way to find Kevin in case I became so weak that his angel warding worked on me as well. I'm supposed to be his archangel, after all."

Dean nodded. "That's why you don't want him hunting. You can't protect him the way you used to."

Michael hung his head, unable to look at Dean. "I was harsh. I just hate that I can't help him. I'm tired from the flight I just made, and you were only a few miles away." He shook his head. "When I was first assigned to Kevin, linked really when his prophet abilities rose, I ignored him unless he was in danger. I could have introduced myself, could have helped him understand his abilities, but I didn't. Anna did, she was vital in Kevin not quite possibly losing his mind."

"But?" Dean guessed.

"He prayed to me. I ignored his problems, but he prayed to me by name to warn me about my brother. Maybe I had come down to smite danger once or twice, but he needed me and I didn't help. So he didn't owe me anything. Yet, he refused to let me face my brother alone. He cared about me, and I hadn't done anything to deserve it. And at that point it was too late to be the strong being he could look up to. He had to take care of me, and it should have been the other way around.

"But then you came, and he had someone to admire. You're stronger than me, and braver too." Dean looked at the archangel with surprise. He'd never expected an archangel, least of all Michael to tell him that. "Dean, you might be able to protect him more than me, and I hate it. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I hate it. I failed Kevin, and I want a chance to make it better, but it seems like I'll never get that chance."

Dean looked at his lap. "You weren't wrong in there, Michael. It's my fault Kevin died, the one from my world. I promised him I'd take care of him after failing so many times, and then an angel that I invited in the door killed him right next to me, and there was nothing I could do."

Dean turned his body to face Michael. "But failing to protect somebody isn't a permanent scar, Michael. There will always be someone you can protect, someone worth protecting.

"But I can't stop Kevin from hunting. If he wants to hunt, he'll do it with or without me, and with or without your blessing. My Kevin would have never chosen this life, but yours has, and there's little you can do about it, short of tying him up everytime you aren't around." Michael let out a small laugh. "Michael, I'd rather he hunt with me, someone who's been hunting since before he could read, than by himself when he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. And maybe you should come too."

"But I don't have my powers as long as I have this scar."

"Yeah? And I don't have any powers. But I'm definitely a better hunter than you two."

"I suppose you have a point." Michael said in defeat. "But Dean, I need you to understand what happened to your Kevin wasn't your fault. From what you've told me about him, he was damned the day the Leviathans dug out that tablet."

Dean smiled over at the angel. He would never be convinced that Kevin's death wasn't his fault, but knowing that Michael, any version of Michael, didn't blame him made him feel a little bit better.

The ghost hunt was an interesting success. On several occasions Dean had to reteach Kevin how to handle a gun, and he had to tell Michael that he couldn't fight the ghosts.

When they salted and burned the bones, he clapped his hands on the shoulders of both men standing on either side of him. "This is a job well done, fellas."

"Perhaps it would be better to solve cases between our different hideouts." Michael conceded, and Kevin looked at him surprised and excited.

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes, but only until we figure out a plan to defeat the remaining of Gabriel's angels."

"Deal." Kevin had a wide grin on his face. "As long as you're willing to teach us Dean."

Dean smiled at them as an idea came to him. "Well we're certainly not going to get far with one rock salt gun and your shitty car."

-

Cass's stomach turned as Sam finished preparing the tracking spell. Dean had been missing for over a week and they had yet to find him. No angels would talk to him, and no demons cared that Dean was missing, so they weren't much help. 

Dean had left his phone on the couch when he got up to get those beers, and Sam and Cass managed to find every single other phone Dean owned, either scattered around the bunker or inside Baby, who was also still in the garage. There were no cars missing at all, none of his clothes were missing, no food or supplies of any kind had been taken. It was like Dean vanished with no resources.

They spent the week either reaching out to hunters and police about Dean, or getting the ingredients for a tracking spell. Rowena had left Sam with quite the stash of witchcraft items and spell books and journals, so it was easy to find a number of tracking spells.

The problem was, this was the third tracking spell they had tried, and if this came up with nothing then they would be out of options. And Cass refused to be out of answers.

"Nothing. Fucking nothing!" Sam aggressively swiped the bowl and excess ingredients onto the ground, vials and jars shattering. He collapsed into his seat. "What do we do?" His voice was weak and quiet.

"I… I don't know." Cass's voice was shaky and scared, and Sam's face softened. "I'm sorry." Cass mumbled quickly as he ran out of the room. Sam didn't get up to follow him, he just stared at the mess he'd made on the floor.

Cass ran through the halls and stumbled into a room, collapsing against a bed, struggling to breathe. Not that he needed to, but the distress his body was becoming prey to was rising. He sunk down to the floor, clutching onto the bed post like it would steady him. It didn't. 

It took him a moment to realize that he ran to Dean's room. He wondered if this is what a human panic attack was. He wanted to be dead, he wanted to be anywhere but here, but he also didn't want to leave even for a moment.

Cass cried into the corner of the mattress. He didn't cry often, but this time it hit him hard and unexpected. The tracking spells were telling them that Dean was gone. Not dead, not missing, gone. Gone like he just ceased to exist. Dean Winchester didn't exist. It simply wasn't a thought he could wrap his mind around.

He'd spent over ten years friends with a man who no longer existed, helping him, sacrificing for him, betraying him. A man who no longer existed did the same for him, over and over. He wanted to hold the man that no longer existed.

The only person who could have made him feel better right now, the only one who could calm him and stop him from shaking was a man who no longer existed.

What did that mean for him? Why the hell did he wait so long to tell him how he felt? Why didn't he hug him more, tell him he loved him more? Tell him he was in love with him? Why didn't he sit closer to him during movies, why didn't he go on more cases with him, why did he waste so much time away from him? 

Why didn't he grab his hand and pull him back onto the couch and finished the damn movie?

He closed his eyes, his body still shaking violently. Dean wouldn't want to see him like this. Dean would walk in the room and ask him what he was doing on the floor at the foot of his bed. He would help him up and hug him until the crying stopped, and then threaten him not to tell Sam he was such a softie. He wouldn't leave Cass's side until the angel laughed, and then he'd get him a beer and sit with him awhile.

The thoughts he had of Dean made him still. He finally stopped shaking and crying, but he didn't get up.

It took about an hour before Sam appeared at the doorway, seeing Cass sitting with his legs stretched out, leaning against the foot of Dean's bed on the floor of his room. Cass looked up at the man towering above him and saw that his face was red and puffy and streaked with dried tears. Cass wondered if he looked the same, but didn't ask.

Sam just walked to Cass's side and sunk down to the floor next to him. It wasn't the same as it was with Dean, he didn't sit leg to leg with him, or put his arm around his shoulders. The space Cass felt all around him, the lack of somebody constantly finding an excuse to touch him, was sickeningly empty and painful.

"Maybe I shouldn't have said he wasn't a cowboy." Sam's voice was half joking, but Cass could feel the seriousness behind his statement.

"I probably shouldn't have made fun of his poncho." Cass added, which caused Sam to let out a single, but genuine laugh.

"It was a poncho."

"It really was."

Sam's smile faded, but it wasn't completely gone when he continued, which only made his question more heartbroken. "This wasn't our fault, right? He would have disappeared whether he got up or not, right?"

Cass looked at his hands. He curled and uncurled his fingers, desperate to grab onto some part of Dean. Grab his hand or his shoulder or the back of his jacket as he pulled him into a life-threateningly tight hug.

"I don't know Sam."


	5. Chapter 5

They ran into two hunts on their way to Battle Creek, Michigan. Two hunts that just reminded Dean of how low they were running on supplies.

If they had any hopes of keeping the Lance out of the angels' hands then they were going to need supplies Dean damn well knew that Dean would have in the Impala.

Based on what Michael told him about this Dean Winchester, his life was extremely similar to Dean's own up until the freeing of Lucifer from the cage. Or in this world, the lack thereof.

Apparently Dean had used Chuck Shurley and his archangel, Raphael, to smite Lilith in that motel room and it worked. She couldn't flee and she died, and considering they hadn't broken 65 seals yet, there was no longer a way for her to be the last seal and the entire thing failed, much to the grief of hell and Gabriel's supporters in heaven.

"Chuck was here? Damn, I guess he did want to try out as many endings as possible." Dean mused as the three ate lunch at a picnic table off the side of the road.

"What do you mean?" Kevin asked. "Anna told me Chuck was the prophet before me, but I don't know much about him."

Dean looked between the two, knowing he was about to drop a bombshell. Specifically on Michael. "Chuck Shurley isn't a prophet. He's God."

He waited for a response. Kevin dropped the sandwich he had been raising to his mouth. Michael just stared at him blankly.

"Um… we're waiting for the punchline Dean." Kevin prompted.

"It's not a joke. I didn't know he was God when I met him either, in fact I didn't learn he was God until the Darkness got free in my world."

"The Darkness got free?" Michael stood up defensively. "How the hell did that happen?"

"Long, long, long story. Trust me. But Chuck inevitably showed up, reluctant to help. But Amara, the Darkness, was emotional at the idea of being alone and I managed to convince her that Chuck wasn't her enemy, and that they should mend their relationship. It was… weird."

Michael hadn't sat back down yet, frozen and trying to process. "Chuck, is God. My father has been traipsing through his different worlds, causing chaos for entertainment."

"Are you okay Michael?" Kevin sacrificed his trillion questions to focus on their friend, which Dean appreciated.

"I don't know. I think, if I had hated him more, maybe I would be furious or devastated. But, the reason I avoided the apocalypse was because I didn't care about getting his attention. So I suppose I don't know how to feel."

Dean rubbed a hand on Michael's back as he sat back down. "I'm sorry."

"So, he showed himself to you?"

"Yes, he had an admiration for my brother, Cass and I. So he showed up."

Michael cocked his head, changing the subject. "By the way, who is this Cass? You've mentioned him several times in your stories but you've never stated who he is exactly."

Dean stared intently at his sandwich. He was hoping they wouldn't ask about that. "Cass is the nickname we have for Castiel."

"Are you serious?!"

"Castiel, who is hunting us down as we speak? The very same Castiel who tried to kill Kevin in the ballroom?"

"Hey, let me remind you that in Apocalypse World you possessed me and used me to slaughter people. I don't hold that against you, because you aren't the same person. Cass isn't Castiel."

"I'm sorry." Michael responded, still sounding shocked despite his best efforts. "It's just hard to picture Castiel as anything but Zachariah's, or hell, Gabriel's best killing machine. I mean, this Castiel is heartless."

"Yeah, well Cass isn't like that!" Dean snapped, more rude than he meant. He softened his tone and gaze. "Cass is kind and caring and he's sacrificed a lot for me. He's the one who raised me from hell in my universe, and he helped us stop the apocalypse. He actually lives with me and my brother."

Kevin let out a heavy breath. "Wow. Castiel, a family guy, huh?"

Dean laughed. "Yeah, it took a while to get him to understand human emotions. But I think he's got it down by now, he feels things deeply, like any other person. Like you, Michael."

"I don't know if I should be flattered or offended."

"Feeling is a good thing. It means you have concern for others, and that you have the capability to just let yourself be happy." Dean stared at the sandwich he uselessly packed for Michael. "Maybe you should try eating the sandwich, Michael. It might make you happy."

"I don't need to eat, Dean. And if I did I would just taste all the molecules individually."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Cass's batteries have been low the last year or two. He hasn't had his wings in a while and it takes more strength to heal people, but the hidden benefit is that he likes food now. You're injured and it sucks, but you might like a sandwich."

Michael gave him a look that showed he disagreed, but took a bite of the sandwich anyway. His face lit up as he chewed, and Dean didn't think he'd ever seen Adam Milligan's face look that excited about anything. 

"I can taste it! As a whole! This is amazing!" He devoured the rest in one bite and Kevin and Dean shared a content and amused look. "Is this what you two taste every day of your lives?"

"Well, we don't make ham sandwiches every day, but basically." Kevin laughed in response.

"Perhaps your Castiel, Cass, was right about human emotions. Maybe there's a benefit to them."

Dean smiled thinking of Cass eating a sandwich for the first time in a long time in the bunker, the look on his face as he realized it tasted the way it tasted when he had been human. He had been so excited, so thrilled, and Dean spent the rest of the week making ham sandwiches at Cass's request. He would always sound embarrassed and hesitant when he'd ask Dean to make one, but Dean loved it. He loved making sandwiches for Cass. He loved watching Cass eat the sandwich. He loved the smile on Cass's face after every bite. He loved Cass.

God, it hurt. It had been almost a month. A month had passed and he was still here. He knew he morally couldn't go back home and abandon Kevin and Michael and the whole world, but goddammit he ached for his bedroom, for his Impala, for his brother, for his angel. Every once in a while he would see or hear or feel something that just reminded him that he may be happy with his new friends, but he missed his world and his family.

He thought about Sam and Cass every day. Kevin in the passenger seat of that ugly car, making fun of Dean for making a stupid joke made him think of Sam. Michael sitting quietly, occasionally laughing or rolling his eyes made him think of Cass. Kevin shouting for who took his toothbrush in the motel room of the night reminded him of Sam. Lying down alone every night, feeling cold and homesick reminded him of Cass.

Not that he wasn't alone in his bed every night wherever he was. It was a very real possibility that Dean could die here. He'd faced threats worse than a handful of angels, but they were lacking so many resources and allies that this was almost the hardest test Dean had ever faced. And if Dean died here, what would Sam and Cass think? That he just vanished into thin air and never returned? They wouldn't even know he died. And then it would be too late to tell Cass anything, and there was a lot he wanted to tell him.

He spent the rest of their lunch listening to Kevin and Michael talk and laugh about ham sandwiches through closed eyes, imagining it was Cass and Sam. And he would reach his hand across the table and Cass would take it and he would smile.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean Winchester didn't get a lot of visitors. He lived a humble life with Lisa and Ben, he ran a humble auto shop in the middle of a humble town. He was happy and content.

Occasionally he would have dreams about slicing through vampire heads or standing above a burning coffin, but as the years passed they turned into nightmares, and then into vague, fuzzy memories.

He was friends with half the town, they all loved him, probably because he had been raised with a lot of skills that made him into a capable guy. All his years of hunting taught him life skills that were useful when it came to helping out around the neighborhood. He had a vast knowledge of herbs and flowers (for spellwork), he could fix literally anything wrong with a car, and he was never scared of bugs and pests and was frequently called to help get rid of them.

His life was happy and uneventful until he got a knock on the door. He opened the door to see a kid. Okay, not really a kid, but he looked about Ben's age and he refused to see Ben as an adult even though he'd been in college for two years now. The kid had short black hair and he wore a simple gray sweater and black jeans. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and he looked at Dean, studying his face rather obviously and aggressively. 

"Hello?"

"Hey. Nice beard." He commented, still staring at him.

"Uh, thanks?" The kid still didn't respond. "Are you here for Ben, because he and his mother are in town getting lunch."

"No! Sorry, um, I should introduce myself. My name is Kevin Tran, and I'm a prophet of the Lord."

Dean blinked at him. The kid's eyes were narrowed, and he was chewing on his lip. He clearly looked nervous to see Dean's reaction, but the retired hunter just sighed and opened his door widely, gesturing for him to come in. Kevin decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and hurried inside as Dean shut the door behind him.

Kevin sat down at his kitchen island, drumming his fingers on the counter. Dean sat across from him, wringing his hands. "I'm sorry, but I can't imagine that you would have anything else to write about."

"Write about? What do you mean?"

"The last time I ever hunted, so to speak, I met a prophet. Chuck Shurley."

Kevin nodded coldly, Dean noticing a strange look falling over the kid's face. "Yes, the man who wrote the Winchester Gospels. Well, he must be dead considering I'm here." He could tell there was more that Kevin wasn't telling him. "I'm not a writer, I'm a hunter. Or at least, I'm trying to be. I'm a hunter in training."

Dean, though he barely knew this kid, felt something rise in his stomach. "You know, just because you're tangled in this stuff right now, that doesn't need to be your life."

"I know, but I love it. Helping people. Back at school, no one ever looked at me like they cared about me, even when I was trying my best to impress everyone. But the last few weeks when I went hunting? I was helping those people, and it didn't even matter that they didn't know what I was doing. I finally felt like I didn't need validation."

He didn't want to admit any of it out loud, but that both warmed and broke his heart. "You think you're ready for hunting?"

"Well, I have the best teacher in the entire world." Kevin wiggled his brow dramatically at the retired hunter.

Dean raised an eyebrow, not really wanting to know. "Sorry, what is it you're doing here if not to write about me?"

"I don't have visions of you or your brother, if that's what you were wondering. We live separate lives, at least, we did, until a month ago."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning there's some supernatural stuff you don't know about, and I would sound crazy trying to explain, but basically, I need your Impala."

"You need my what?!"

"I know I sound insane! But my friends and I are up against Gabriel's angels, god you don't know about that either, we're up against angels who are trying to take over the world. And my friend assumed you would still have your Impala and all the weapons in the trunk, and we could use them right now."

"Kid, did you come into my house to ask to take my car? My Baby?"

"He said you'd call it that."

"Who? Whose idea was this, let me know so I can aim between their eyes."

"That would be a bit awkward."

"Kid, start making sense."

Kevin sighed and rubbed his temple. "I didn't think I was the best for this job either, but we're running low on resources, and I was possibly the only person we could send that wouldn't freak you the hell out. But we're out of allies, and Dean doesn't like my car."

"Dean? Like me?" He let out a laugh, slightly bemused, but then he stopped when Kevin's face was stone cold serious. "But, it's not me. I'm me."

"Yeah, your you, I'm me, Dean's an interdimensional guest, and Michael's an archangel. And apparently my car is a 'bitch car for pussies'." Kevin put the last bit in air quotes.

Dean just stared at him. "Michael? As in… fucking Michael?" Kevin nodded. Dean gave the countertop a light punch. "I need a drink."

"Hear hear!" Kevin added sarcastically, sounding exhausted. But as Dean got up to walk to the fridge, the doorbell rang. Two visitors in one day, what were the odds?

"What are you doing?!" Kevin whispered sharply as Dean walked to the door. "You don't just answer the door, you have no clue who it could be! Check without them seeing."

Dean rolled his eyes and looked through the peephole, and for the first time Kevin's words made sense. He could see on the other side of the door was a vaguely familiar face. Black hair, scary blue eyes, trenchcoat. 

"Who is it?" Kevin whispered loudly from the kitchen.

Dean turned to him angrily. "What have you brought to my house! It's a damn angel!"

He could see Kevin freeze in terror momentarily. "I didn't bring them! I've got the same warding as you!" He wildly beckoned to his chest. "And if I was followed I wouldn't have made it to your doorstep alive!"

Dean cursed a god he didn't believe in and angrily pointed to the stairs. Kevin didn't waste a second running up the stairs and disappearing from sight.

Dean opened the door and smiled awkwardly at the angel. He didn't smile back.

"Dean Winchester." He pushed past him and walked straight into his house. Dean left the door open this time, intentionally.

"What an interesting surprise." Dean responded exasperatedly. "Please, come in why don't you!"

"I am in."

"Yeah I can see that. What are you doing here?" Dean tapped his foot impatiently as Castiel scanned his living room.

"I'm not sure if you remember me, but I was a part of Anna's garrison."

"I remember. Castiel, right?"

"Yes. Well, I am aware that you and Anna were fond of each other. I know she helped you on multiple occasions."

"She did, she's a great friend."

Castiel let out a creepy laugh at that but said nothing incriminating. "Well, I'm afraid there's bad news. Anna was murdered yesterday."

Dean's stony composure fell. Anna was his best friend, she had raised him from hell, helped him and his brother avoid the apocalypse, hell, he had been on the phone with her just yesterday, she told him she was a few states over, stopping in a cafe, and said she'd come to visit in a few days.

"No, that's not possible."

"I'm afraid it is, but we know who killed her. It was a team effort."

"Why are you telling me any of this?" Dean bit his lip, trying not to let anger flood through every word he said.

"Because her murderers might be coming to you next. I'm not sure if they'll ask for assistance or threaten your life, but they might come by, if they haven't already. Tell me, Dean, have you received any visitors in the last day?"

Something felt so wrong about the man's low, intimidating voice saying Dean's name.

"No, I don't get many visitors from out of town. No one new's been here in awhile. Except you, Cass."

The angel appeared before him in an instant, a chilling look on his face. "Don't you ever call me that again." He threatened, and Dean just gulped, backing away a step. Castiel straightened out his coat, a look of calm once again washing over him. "I apologize, but God himself gave me my name, and I don't approve of human's changing it. Anyway, I thought I should tell you that should any of Anna's murderers come here, simply pray to me and I will come and smite them. You wouldn't want them to endanger your family would you? Would you, Dean?"

Dean shook his head, still frozen. It had been over ten years since he dealt with supernatural problems, and he was a bit embarrassed to admit that he was terrified of Castiel.

"Well, the group has an archangel, Michael specifically, you'd know him if you saw him. There's also a prophet, a young kid named Kevin Tran, really jittery guy. And the other one… you'll know him when you see him too. Believe me." Castiel gave one last judgemental look around Dean's house. "I'll leave you to it now. Have a good night." And he strolled right out the door.

When Dean went to close it he could see Castiel had already disappeared completely. He closed the door silently and watched out the peephole for a minute.

"He's gone, Kevin." Dean didn't look away from the door, but he heard Kevin's steps thunder down the stairs.

"Dean, I swear, we didn't kill,"

"I know." Dean interrupted the kid who looked extremely panicked. 

"You know?"

"Yesterday, Anna called me, and when she hung up she said that she was surprised to see her brother had walked into the cafe, and I doubt she would refer to Michael as her brother."

"Castiel killed her." Kevin's voice was cold.

"Obviously. He's giving me skeevy vibes. I can't believe he murdered my best friend and then walked right into my house and I couldn't do a damn thing about it." Dean kicked his trash can with so much force that it flew across the room and hit the wall. At least he's still got it.

Why did he leave hunting? Why did he think that supernatural shit would just leave him and everyone he loved alone? Why did Castiel even want Anna to die? She hadn't done anything. 

"I'm sorry, Dean." Kevin's voice was barely above a whisper. "She was my friend too. She's the one who told me about my powers. I would have been lost if she hadn't helped me."

They shared a moment of silence before Dean went over to an end table and pulled out the drawer. He then pulled out what looked like a fake bottom and reached down. Kevin had to react quickly as Dean tossed him a pair of keys.

"Are these?"

"Listen, I've been out of the game for a long time kid. More than ten years. And you know, I haven't taken her out for a drive in half that. And I hate that I'm sitting here while those dick angels are apparently planning to take over the world. You are old enough to drive, right?" Kevin sent him a murderous glare. "I'm kidding! But seriously, kid. I hate sitting on my ass while shit's going down, but what can I do? I'm rusty, and I've got a wife and a son to take care of. But if you, and your archangel, and Dean the interdimensional visitor, which by the way I don't want to know what that even means, have a small chance of stopping it, then you need all the resources you can get. And Baby's the best resource for any hunter."

Kevin waited a second before rushing over to Dean and wrapping his arms around him. Dean seemed surprised but quickly returned the hug. This kid could have been Ben if Dean hadn't stopped hunting. He couldn't imagine Ben going through that life so he cut it out completely. He hoped this kid, Kevin, had a life planned for when this was over. 

"Don't get yourself killed, understand?" Dean asked pointedly as he walked Kevin out to the garage. He watched as Kevin sat behind the wheel, excitedly looking around, and his heart melted.

He felt a bit sad and confused and surprised at himself as he realized what he wanted to do, needed to do. "Hey Kevin?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't bother bringing her back."

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean it. She's yours. Not your friend's or your angel's, yours."

Kevin gawked at him through the open window. "You can't mean that. You love this car. You'd die for this car."

Dean laughed. "In another life. But I'm happy, Kevin. And if you want to be a hunter, this is the best car for the job. She should be out there, hunting."

"Are you sure? I know what this car means to you Dean, I know better than you think and better than I can explain."

Dean just shook his head. "I put that behind me. I love my brother and I still talk to him almost every day, and he's the only real good memory I have of this car. Don't get me wrong, I love her, but it's about time she stretched her legs. And there's no one better for her than you Kevin."

"But you just met me."

"Yeah, and I'm already impressed. Take it as a compliment."

"Dean, thank you. Thank you so much for this, for everything."

"Don't thank me, protect me alright? Kill those damn angels so I can sleep at night. Kill Castiel and tell him it's for Anna."

Kevin nodded. "I promise. That won't be a problem."

-

Michael was pacing the motel room. "What if he said no? What if Zachariah found him? What if he got taken? What if,"

"Calm down, would you?" Dean attempted to placate the archangel. "We both agreed, Kevin can handle this. It's not like either of us would have been better."

"Yeah, we would have been better, because we have a better chance at defending ourselves."

"Maybe, but we have zero chance at getting Dean to hand over that Impala. Believe me, I'm Dean. If you had shown up, we don't know if this Dean knew Adam or not and would then freak out, or if he didn't, your people skills aren't exactly up to parr just yet. And don't forget, he may be rusty, but I'm pretty sure he'd have you pegged right away as an angel. And if I showed up, imagine how that conversation would go."

"I know you're right." Michael sighed, defeated. "It doesn't make it any easier."

Dean finally got the confidence to ask what he'd been thinking about for a while. "Michael, how is… um… Adam?"

Michael cocked his head. "I guess you wouldn't know. Adam wasn't in a good place when I came to him. His mother had been killed by a ghoul and he was lost. He didn't want to live anymore. My timing must have been pretty good because I wasn't too late. He accepted as long as I kept him asleep in here indefinitely. I surround him with dreams of him and his mother when he was little."

Dean rubbed at his face. "I guess Adam gets a poor deal in any universe, huh?" It was a somber statement and Michael finally sat down opposite of him on the other bed, their knees knocking into each other.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"No, I'm sorry about all of this. I'm sorry that Kevin summoned you because I couldn't manage to defeat Gabriel's angels. I'm sorry that you've been here for so long."

Dean reached forward and put a hand on Michael's knee. "Hey. You and Kevin have made all of this so much easier. I love you guys, you understand that? You two aren't a burden. I'm glad I could be here to help, even if I haven't done all that much."

"You've done more than you know, Dean. Kevin looks up to you, he thinks you're the coolest person in the world. I'm sure that's part of the reason he was so excited to be the one to ask this world Dean for his car. He thinks the world of you. And you have made this so much easier on me. I've never known how to react to not being at full power, and for the first few months of my injury I'm sure Kevin was losing his mind taking care of me like I was a child. I felt useless so I became useless.

"But you reminded me that I wasn't broken, I was just more human. And you are definitely the most impressive human I've ever met. So, do you understand that Dean?"

Dean blinked at him in surprise. He hadn't expected to receive such high praise from anyone for the job he did or the person he was. Hearing it from this archangel who he had come to respect hit him in his heart in a way he didn't expect.

"And, for that, I have something for you." Michael got up, went to Kevin's duffle, pulled out a stone bowl, and sat back down in front of Dean. It was filled with ingredients yet to be mixed, and in one of those vials in the bowl was what was unmistakably angelic grace. If he was a betting man he'd say it was Michael's.

"Michael, what is this?" It wasn't a question about what was literally in front of him, he wasn't stupid. He'd seen this bowl of ingredients several times, once when he walked with Arthur Ketch into a ravaged world, once when Lucifer was stooped over it, leaking out his grace, and once again on the floor of the ballroom, where Kevin had his body cowered over it, a guilty look on his face.

"Kevin and I talked about it, and we both agreed that now that I've built up more grace to spare, that we should offer you a way home. Now before you argue, I'm not telling you to open a rift home right now, because it's only enough to stay open for one person to go through. And it's one way."

"What do you mean, one way?"

"I mean that even if you have a bucket of archangel grace, you won't get back here. It's Zachariah's doing, he has witches on his payroll that are locking your world out of here. But they can't lock your world entirely."

"So you're saying that when this is over I can go home, but I can't come back."

"Well, kind of. I'm also saying that Kevin and I talked about it and even though we love having you here and we love you, we won't be upset if you go home."

Dean narrowed his eyes at the archangel. "You mean you won't be upset when I go home after we've killed the angels."

Michael looked away from Dean's face. "I know you miss your home. And Kevin and I don't want to be the reason you stay away from them."

Dean took a leveled breath. "You're right. I miss them. I miss Sam, and I miss Cass. I think about them all the time. But I'm not leaving you guys. I can't leave you guys."

Michael stared deeply into Dean's eyes and he felt like his mind was being read. "Dean, can you do this? If you get the opportunity, will you be able to kill Castiel?"

He froze. He hadn't considered it. Sure, he wasn't a big fan of this Castiel, and he had been the one to insist repeatedly that it was not Cass, he may look like him but he wasn't him.

But Dean also remembered how scarily similar he had looked to Cass. He remembered those mixed emotions seeing Castiel, the angel, his angel, his Cass, holding Kevin down on the ground. He hadn't seen Castiel since he and Kevin escaped the ballroom last month and he was quite happy with that, because Michael was probably right for bringing it up. Could he look Castiel in the eyes and end his life?

"Dean, interrupt me and stop me if I'm overstepping, but you talk about Cass quite a lot. He meant something to you didn't he?"

"He's part of my family."

"I know, but it's different when you talk about him than when you talk about Sam. It is, isn't it?"

Dean nodded distractedly. "Yes, I suppose you're right about that."

"Dean, and again, I'm sorry if I'm wrong and completely off base, but do you love Cass? Are you in love with Castiel?"

The motel room felt quiet. Dean's ears felt fuzzy. He had thought things along that nature before, but in his own head. It had never been said out loud before, and certainly never been in anybody else's voice. It was grounding and yet he had never felt so exposed. 

But it wasn't wrong. It was actually completely correct. It was full-faces honesty that he didn't want to have to think about. But no, that wasn't quite it, was it? He loved Cass. He was in love with Cass. And now, someone said it out loud for him and that was it. But now it was so much worse, because Cass wasn't here.

God why hadn't he told him? He'd had so many chances. Why the hell hadn't he just grabbed his face and kissed it? Why hadn't he shouted that he loved him to his face over and over? How many opportunities had he had that he missed? Even if Cass didn't feel the same way, even if he embarrassed himself beyond belief, it wouldn't matter at all, because Cass shouldn't exist somewhere not knowing Dean existed somewhere else, loving him.

Michael was holding his hands in his now, looking into his eyes. He had been for some time, but Dean had been distracted with his thoughts. He hadn't noticed the tears that had fallen freely from his eyes.

"God I love him, Michael. What the fuck do I do?" He laughed out, wiping away his tears.

"Go home and tell him. Consequences be damned, Dean. If you love him, find him and tell him that." Michael offered a little smile.

Dean smiled back at him. "You're right. I'm in love with an angel that I might be forced to kill the doppelganger of. And I could just go home and run into his arms and confess my feelings and wait for a response, but even if he loved me back, and that's a pretty big if, what kind of person would I be then? Cass is the best thing in the whole world. And I won't go home to him as the man who gave up. Hell, who knows, maybe he'd hate me for staying as long as I already have, maybe he'd be pissed to find out I could have gotten back sooner, but I won't return as the guy who could have helped and stopped trying. I won't do that to him or Sam or you or Kevin, or even to myself." Dean squeezed Michael's hands before letting go.

"Alright fine. But don't say I didn't give you an out if this goes south, Dean. I may not be the doe-eyed angel waiting for you at home, but I love you and care about you too. You're like a brother to me, hell, better than the ones I have, or had. Like it or not, you're a part of this family now."

"Yeah well back at you, you idiot." Dean smiled, messing up Michael's hair. Then he had a thought, one he'd been meaning to ask. "Michael, what happened to your family?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know that Gabriel went kind of crazy and you had to kill him, and I know he's the one who slashed you with your Lance, but what about your other brothers?"

Michael raised an eyebrow. "You know well that I never let Lucifer out of the cage my father put him in."

"I do."

"So you're asking me about Raphael."

Dean nodded, getting an amused sigh from Michael. He had been wondering about the differences between their two worlds, and one difference he realized was that if there was never an apocalypse to avoid, there would have been no civil war in heaven between Cass and Raphael.

To Dean, Raphael had always been the archangel he'd forgotten about. Considering Raphael was rarely his enemy directly, and he only saw him a few times before Cass killed him, sometimes he surprised himself to remember there were four archangels. He knew how fortunate it was to Gabriel as an ally those few occasions, and even his Michael, so he wondered if maybe this world's Raphael was alive and willing to help.

"I haven't spoken to my brother in a long time. He maintains his powers, but he's living amongst people. Like my father as Chuck, or what you've told me about the Gabriel you knew. Raphael and I are on good terms as far as I know, but he's not much of a warrior anymore." Michael folded his hands in his lap. "He got hurt when Lucifer fell. It was a last ditch effort on Lucifer's part, he had tried to kill him, but it didn't work. And Raphael recovered physically, but it bothered him for centuries. He was terrified of fighting and he couldn't get near any battles without, well, 'losing it' you could say." Michael looked out of the corner of his eye sadly. "I love my brother, but he wouldn't have any part of this. He'd back down, stay hidden away."

Dean nodded. It sounded a lot like Gabriel, hiding from his family's problems, but he figured that wasn't necessarily an observation that would benefit anyone in the room.

"What would happen to Kevin if you died, Michael? Would he get a new archangel?"

"Technically, yes. Raphael would be tied to him if I no longer existed. It's a bit of a complicated process, but I suppose it would force him out of hiding. Though I'm not sure how smooth or fast the transition would be. No prophet I've ever known has outlasted their own archangel. It could take anywhere from seconds to years before a prophet gets tied to a new one, and by then it could quite possibly be late."

Dean scoffed. "I hear you, prophets don't seem to last very long on their own, do they?"

As if being summoned by the idea, the window behind them lit up with headlights parking outside the room. They both shared a curious and expectant look as they ran outside.

Kevin stepped out of that black '67 Impala, a grin splitting across his entire face.

"Baby!" Dean reached down and wrapped his arms around the hood as best he could. "Oh I've missed you!"

Michael approached Kevin and wrapped an arm around his shoulder with pride. "How did you manage to get him to lend it to you?"

"It's been a crazy day. I'll tell you about it inside."


	7. Chapter 7

It was the unknown that Cass couldn't stand. Sam was leaving the bunker for days on end searching out every possible lead. It was making him crazy, and Cass understood why.

At least if Dean had just dropped dead on his way to the kitchen there would have been closure. Cass would have been devastated, his entire life would have been wrecked, and he'd be filled with just as much regret and brokenness. 

But Dean was just gone, and Cass was starting to prefer physical torture. Humans say "time heals all wounds" but anyone who's had to file a missing persons report that turned up nothing could say that the line is bullshit.

It had been a month of nothing. Cass wasn't feeling any better. He had what might have been perceived as a mental break three weeks in and he hadn't quite recovered from it.

He had been in the kitchen staring at a ham sandwich. He made it, but it didn't look right. It didn't look perfect. There was too much lettuce or not enough, too much ham or not enough, he couldn't tell. So he got more bread and ham and lettuce and tried again. The next one wasn't right either. It just didn't look like the ones Dean made for him.

Sam came home that night to a kitchen full of sandwiches. They were everywhere. Piled on top of each other, on top of the counter and the table and the chairs and the stove and on the floor and in the cabinets and microwaves. He watched as Cass stood in the middle of it all, precariously setting a piece of bread on top of another sandwich, eyeing it closely, before knocking the whole thing on the floor.

Sam grabbed his hands and tried to get his attention but Cass didn't seem to notice, just attempting to try again and again. Sam was hoarse from screaming by the time Cass finally realized what he was doing. He spent the rest of the night ignoring Sam as they cleaned up everything in silence. By the time they were finished, Sam watched as Cass walked down the hall and turned into Dean's room instead of his own.

He had never seen Cass so messed up. He'd never had this many emotions before, so Sam wasn't surprised he was having a crazed reaction. Sam wasn't doing much better outside of the bunker anyway, so he wasn't one to judge.

As time passed Sam noticed Cass went back to not eating anything, and Sam didn't bother going to the store to get more bread.

-

"Are you serious? He let you keep it? Baby's yours now?!"

Kevin nodded with pride. "I still can't believe it. He was so much like you, Dean, just like you guessed, except he had put a lot of distance between himself and hunting."

"And you're sure Castiel didn't see you or know you were there?" Michael asserted for the millionth time.

"Like I said, I'm not sure. All I know is that I'm warded, he didn't even look upstairs, and I wasn't followed back. If he knew I was there then he hasn't shown it."

"Let's hope it stays that way." Dean shared a concerned look with Michael. "The more distance we put between us and the retired Dean the better." Dean clapped his hands together. "But it's getting late, so let's just get some sleep tonight and we'll leave first thing tomorrow morning."

"I second that. I'm exhausted." Kevin said, flourishing it with a yawn. But before he could lie down, his phone rang. "Great, what now?" He checked the caller ID and got a confused look on his face.

"What is it Kev?"

"It's Dean's. We swapped numbers before I left just in case there was an emergency. I put him in as Dean Two."

"Well, answer it then!" Michael insisted.

Kevin shrugged and answered, putting it on speaker.

"Kid." The voice that came out sounded weak and strangled, but it wasn't noticeable enough to fuss about, and it was definitely Dean's.

"Hey Dean, you haven't already changed your mind about the car have you?" Kevin joked, a little worry peeking through his voice.

"Hello boys." A low gravelly and familiar voice came through the line and Dean thought he might throw up. He'd recognize that voice anywhere.

"Castiel." Kevin's voice came out surprisingly controlled.

"Kevin Tran. And I assume Michael and Dean Winchester are listening in as well, am I correct?"

Dean realized that he hadn't heard Castiel speak yet. Or at all. He only saw him in the ballroom a month ago, and none of the angels save for Zachariah spoke then. Dean had to remind himself this wasn't Cass. This was Castiel, a completely different angel with the same name, voice, and face.

But he's not Cass.

"Let him go, he hasn't done anything to you." Kevin sounded angry and Dean wondered how attached he became to this alternate Dean that afternoon.

"Come and get him. Kevin, specifically." And the phone clicked off. Kevin threw it down onto the bed aggressively and then went for his duffle.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"You heard him, Michael. He'll kill Dean." He glanced at the Dean in the room. "Dean Two, I mean."

"Kevin, Castiel will kill him whether you're there or not. I don't think I have to point out that this is a trap, he basically outright told us it was." Michael pointed out.

"Kevin, you need to sit this one out. The three of us are hardly a match for one angel right now. If Castiel takes you or kills you, how will that work out? Is that what you want?" Dean reasoned enough to see Kevin duck his head. He was clearly mad to be sidelined, but there wasn't much he could do here. He didn't exactly have an argument.

"Fine, but take some stuff from the trunk before you go. And you better come back, got it?"

"It's safer this way." Michael put a hand on Kevin's shoulder. "I'll fly us so we won't be long."

"Are you sure? You just pulled out some of your grace for the rift spell." Dean definitely didn't want to fly to Dean Two's house and then have an archangel fall asleep on him.

Michael just nodded sternly. "I have enough strength to fly us there and back. Better not to wait to help him."

Dean had to begrudgingly agree, having a very bad feeling about tonight as they grabbed some holy oil from the trunk.

-

Dean Winchester was being pressed to the floor of his living room, his face bloody and his body aching. He had got home with a pizza meant to surprise Lisa and Ben, but he dropped it when he saw Castiel sitting in his kitchen.

The angel didn't give him much warning or context when he stood and started beating him up. He would lift him and throw him across the room, and his body would hit the wall with a heavy smack.

He repeated this notion until Dean broke both his arms, most of his ribs, and dislocated his jaw.

He was now a crumpled mess on the floor, his body twisted and mangled aggressively, and Castiel's shoe pressing his head to the carpet. Dean couldn't remember the last time he had been hurt this bad, if he had ever been hurt this bad.

Suddenly, following the flapping of wings, two people he didn't recognize were standing a few feet away from him and the sadistic angel. Well, he did recognize that one of them was himself. Dean Winchester was literally standing a few feet from Dean Winchester, which, while being completely insane, actually fit with Kevin's weird explanation of his friends from earlier, and Castiel's calling of his own name on the phone. It's simply easier to believe it once you've seen it.

So he had to assume, the other man was the archangel Michael, which he had to admit, he was surprised and not too eager to see. Anna told him that she was supposed to raise Dean from hell so he could be Michael's vessel for the apocalypse, but they never got far enough in for Michael to ever meet Dean, and he found out later that Michael hadn't been too keen on wearing him to the prom anyway.

"I see you've opted to leave the prophet at home." Castiel said with a sigh. He didn't sound disappointed or surprised, just tired. Dean could see from the ground that the mention of the prophet made both men bristle.

"Let this man go, Castiel. He hasn't done anything to go against Gabriel's angels. He's just a regular person now." Michael attempted to reason with Castiel, but a part of Dean knew deep down he wasn't long for this world.

"I don't think you comprehend just how insignificant humans are, Michael," Castiel said. "And I'm beginning to think you are underestimating how much I care about what happens to anyone that gets in my way. Anna didn't do anything either, but she was going to be in my way, so I killed her. Sam Winchester didn't tell me anything, so I killed him too."

Dean felt his world spin. He had no idea if Lisa and Ben were safe, and now he was told point blank that this angel murdered his brother. Sammy, who was living the life he always wanted. Killed, because some angels found a way to drag the Winchester boys back into the game.

He could tell that the comment shook the other Dean Winchester in the room just a little bit, but he managed to stay standing with a calm, albeit angry look on his face.

"You two just don't understand. We want the weapon. That's it. So if you would just tell me wherever it is you hid it, this would all be over."

"No, this whole world would be over. You don't have to do this, you can let him go." Dean pleaded for the retired, happier version of himself pinned to the floor, a grotesque mess of a person. He knew what Castiel could do to you when he was pissed, he'd been on the receiving end of it a few times, but that always came from a Cass who cared about him deep down. It was hard to see Castiel pin Dean down here because it was an image of a Castiel that couldn't care less about him, and it was a bit terrifying.

"What is it with you people thinking all angels should serve you? I don't serve man, I serve heaven." Castiel grabbed Dean Two's arm and pulled it up, causing Dean to yelp in pain considering it was already broken in every way possible. "And I certainly don't serve you."

With one swift, effortless motion, Castiel ripped Dean's arm completely off. He screamed and screamed until the blood loss and shock completely shut down his system. And with that, Castiel disappeared, flying off to who knows where.

Dean and Michael were quickly on their knees around the unmoving Dean Winchester. It was an ugly sight that made Dean want to throw up, he was staring down at his own body, but more mangled and destroyed.

"He's dead." Michael said dryly, and he stood up and wordlessly went up the stairs.

Dean couldn't move. He'd taken beatdowns before, but staring at the aftermath of it in the mirror was always the worst part. This was a sickening image had it been literally anyone, but it was so strange considering it was himself.

And Castiel did that. He knew it wasn't Cass, but could Cass do that? Had he ever wanted to? No, dammit, Castiel and Cass were two completely different people. But when he heard his voice and looked in his eyes, dammit it was Cass. Why couldn't this violent Castiel have a different vessel? Why was this so hard for him?

He was finally brought back from his thoughts when Michael came back down the stairs. "Dean, he killed them too."

"Lisa and Ben?"

"I'm sorry."

Dean didn't know what to say. He hadn't seen his own Lisa and Ben in probably ten years, but it made him feel queasy. There was a reason he had Cass erase their memories of him, anytime Ben and Lisa were with Dean Winchester, it didn't end well. Why did this Dean think he was special? He wasn't fucking special, you don't just get to walk away from the life. Why the hell did he think he could just walk out and be safe? What was the point? There were no more Winchesters left alive in this world. Except Dean himself, and this wasn't his world.

"We need to go back and tell Kevin." Dean sighed, finally standing up and backing away from his dead doppelganger. "He's going to be pretty upset."

Michael gave him a single nod and Dean shut his eyes, preparing to be back in the motel in an instant.

Except the motel room was a mess. The lamp was knocked over, the bed sheets were on the floor, and the door was wide open.

Kevin's phone was on the floor, ringing.

"No, no no no no no no no." Michael ran to the bathroom, and then outside. Dean felt his hands shaking as he went to pick up the phone. The caller ID read "Dean Two" which only filled him with more dread.

He decided to answer, panic settling in his stomach, but he didn't say a word when he answered.

"Hello again."

Dammit Cass.

"In case you were wondering, my friend Samandriel came to take your prophet. I'm sure you won't mind if we borrow him."

"Cass, please,"

"Don't call me that. We'll be in touch." And the phone clicked off. Dean had to summon all his self-control not to slam the phone on the floor and break it into a thousand pieces.

"It was a distraction." Michael's angry voice came from behind him. "He tried to convince us he wanted Kevin so we'd leave him on his own long enough for the other angels to take him. We didn't stand a chance."

"How did they know where we were?" Dean was getting angry and sad and every negative emotion he could summon.

Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose, and Dean noticed the slight quiver of his frame that resulted from his flying. With his other hand he had started self-consciously rubbing at the injury slowly killing him under his shirt. Dean noticed he did that whenever he was frustrated with his lack of power. "He must have known. He must have followed Kevin from Dean's house and reported it for later. I think him coming to Dean's house at all was supposed to distract us, set us after Castiel specifically, forgetting about Samandriel and Uriel."

Dean looked to the ceiling and cursed out a God he was sure wasn't listening. 

Of course Castiel had been a great distraction for him. He should have known better, he should have gone alone and left Michael to protect Kevin, to fly away when the angels came knocking.

There had been no way to win this one. If Dean had gone alone to see Castiel, he would have been too late to save Dean Two, though even with speed they couldn't save him, and Castiel likely would have just captured Dean instead of Kevin when Michael flew off with him, and then Michael and Kevin wouldn't have the car and the supplies. If Michael had gone alone, Dean and Kevin both would have been taken. It was useless.

"So what now?" Dean asked, knowing Michael didn't have an answer and not expecting one.

-

It was only a day before they received another call from "Dean Two" on Kevin's phone.

"Well, nice to hear from you!" This time it was Zachariah, his cheery voice making Dean's blood boil. "So, I want to make a deal."

"Isn't that a demon thing? I thought you were supposed to be the good guys." Dean attempted to insult him, unable to do much else.

"Very funny Dean. But no more jokes. You and Michael give yourselves up to us willingly and we'll let Kevin Tran keep breathing. Come to the ballroom in an hour."

"How do we know he is alive?" Michael asked, his fists curled.

"You don't." And then they hung up. What was it with the angels and hanging up the damn phone with no warning?

"Michael it's a trap. Another one."

Michael shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Kevin's in danger. I'm supposed to be the one thing between him and danger and now his warding is working, hiding him from even me. There's nothing else I can do."

It was becoming obvious for a while that Michael was getting worse. It was probably first noticeable the same day he tried eating that sandwich. The wound he had from his own Lance was getting worse and he was getting weaker and weaker. Now he wasn't just human, he was like a sick little child.

He had been trying to hide it, but Dean and Kevin both had noticed how he stumbled when he walked. He would clutch at his stomach where the wound hid and he'd get dizzy. It was only getting worse and worse as the days had gone on, and their flight to and from Dean's house the night before wasn't doing him any favors.

Dean got an idea. Albeit, an evil and perhaps monumentally stupid one.

"Besides, you need me. The ballroom you were summoned in is many states over, there's no way you could be there in an hour."

Dean hung his head, sighing loudly. "It's all too much Michael. What's our plan here? You're weaker than you realize, you're not going to last to their torture. You won't give in, but your body will completely shut down, your human vessel and your damaged angelic form. They can torture me all they want because I don't actually know where your Lance is."

"I'm not going to let that happen, Dean. I'm going to protect both you and Kevin. This isn't your battle any longer. It never should have been."

The two sat mostly in silence until it was about ten minutes before they needed to be at the ballroom. 

Michael stood finally, and reached an arm to Dean's shoulder, unaware of what he had hidden in his lap.

Michael flew them a few yards away from the ballroom, or really that tall old warehouse or factory place it was housed in, and he obscured them in the trees.

"Okay, they can't sense us but the minute we're inside we need to hurry. Now we're outmanned but… Dean what are you doing?" Michael looked at the hunter with a quizzical frown as Dean had immediately knelt to the ground and started mixing something together in a bowl.

"You're right, this never should have been my battle." Dean muttered quietly.

Michael felt his heart, if he were to have one in the first place, so maybe it was Adam's, drop to his feet, if he were to have them in the first place, so maybe they were Adam's. Dean had brought with him the bowl with the spell's ingredients to take him home. More precisely, to take him home and lock the door and throw away his key.

He stood by what he and Kevin agreed upon, Dean had the right to go home whenever he chose, and even if Michael was sad or scared or angry about it, he wouldn't let Dean know. This wasn't Dean's home or his fight. 

The golden light emanated from the rift after Dean added his hair and Michael's grace. Dean then stood up and put his hands on either one of Michael's shoulders.

"I understand Dean. I wish you well." Michael genuinely did, but he was becoming more aware of exactly how weak this long flight had made him as he nearly collapsed under Dean's tight grip on his shoulders.

"Michael, I need you to understand why I'm doing this. But I can't let them find your Lance. I have to find it first, and then it has to be broken. It's the only way to save you, and your days are clearly numbered."

Michael just blinked at him. "I don't understand what that has to do with you going home."

Dean ignored his comment. "And this will send me right back to the spot I was taken from?" Michael nodded, still confused. "Then, again, I'm sorry about this. It's for your own good."

Before Michael could understand what was happening, Dean used his hold on the archangel to push him backward, sending him tumbling into the rift.


	8. Chapter 8

Michael was thrown through the rift, his back facing the world he was thrown into, and he landed awkwardly, attempting to catch himself on his hands but landing on his back, propped up by his elbows.

He scrambled to stand and run back into the rift but it closed, leaving the image of a hallway that he'd been tossed into behind it.

He was locked here. Dean Winchester locked him here, goddammit. What the hell was he supposed to do? He knew how this worked, hell, he was the one who explained to Dean how this worked. He was trapped here, and his archangel grace wasn't going to dig him out of this hole.

"Who are you?" A deep and familiar voice came from behind and Michael spun, pulling his archangel blade out and aiming it at the angel Castiel.

But as quickly as he drew his blade, he felt a sickening stab in his stomach. The travel between dimensions had only exacerbated his injury, and the weakness and blinding pain over took him as he stumbled sideways and crashed into the wall. He held up his blade, trying to defend himself, but his vision went black, and the last thing he saw as he sunk to the ground was the hem of that familiar trenchcoat as he appeared to run to him.

-

Dean let out a hefty breath. Michael was definitely pissed. He knew that if he saw Michael again, there would be no limitation to his wrath. 

He realized he had just screwed over the archangel Michael. He didn't like what the consequences of that might be.

But Michael couldn't afford to stay. He was blinded by his need to protect Kevin that he was stupidly endangering himself. He didn't need to. It was completely unnecessary. Dean wasn't going to sit by and watch this angel, as helpless and weak as he was becoming, be killed. Because if Michael died, then humanity was screwed. He was the last thing between the remaining of Gabriel's loyalist angels and the entirety of humanity.

It wasn't just the Lance they needed to keep out of Zachariah's hands, it was Michael. And even though Michael wouldn't back down easily, Dean knew it had to be done. 

He already didn't even know if Kevin was alive. He was banking on it, because if he was dead then Dean basically just trapped himself in a world full of violent angels out for his head, where both parties had no access to the Lance. Then, they wouldn't need it to take over. They'd just need their numbers.

As Dean walked toward the double doors he had so gracelessly been thrown out of a month ago, he began to worry about his lack of a plan. He had a plan, it just wasn't a good one. In fact it was horrible, and it relied on factors he didn't understand. Hell, Michael hadn't even really seemed to understand them.

He walked right in and was immediately greeted by Samandriel grabbing his arms and holding them aggressively behind his back.

"Hey, watch it man! You're going to dislocate my shoulder." Dean protested as Samandriel began shoving him forward. 

Ahead of him was Zachariah standing in the same spot he'd been in when Dean first arrived in here. In fact, most things hadn't changed. Kevin was again being pressed to the ground, but this time he was bloody and beaten. Dean chewed on his lip, trying to control his temper frok screwing this up. 

One thing he noticed was Uriel wasn't here like he expected. "Hey, where's the big guy? Social anxiety?"

"Uriel had his uses, now he doesn't." Zachariah answered plainly, obvious code for "I murdered him when he failed me".

Zachariah stalked over to Dean and grabbed him himself, and Dean almost felt less safe when Samandriel let go and took a few steps away. Before Dean was even really aware, Zachariah had reached up and punched him in the face. Hard. Using that extra bit of angelic strength to break his nose.

"Sorry about the lack of professionalism. That just felt good!" Zachariah's face was a little too happy about it. "Well, I'll leave you to it. Castiel, why don't you do the honors?" Zachariah beckoned the trenchcoated angel to Dean.

Dean's imagination didn't have to try too hard to know what that entailed for him as Castiel grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and threw him down, hard onto the wooden floor. He bent down, grabbing the collar of his jacket once more, and then he proceeded to slam Dean's head into the floor over and over. Each time he brought him back up he punched him back into the ground.

He could hear Kevin shouting his name and he felt guilty, wishing the kid wasn't here to see it. Everytime Kevin got louder he made a sharp grunt sound, and Dean couldn't see him through the stars clouding his vision and his constant view of only the ceiling and Castiel's stoic expression, but if he were to hazard a guess he would say that Samandriel was kicking him to shut him up.

It was hard. It had been hard when Cass was being controlled by Naomi, and it was hard now. Dean had taken several beatings, after all he'd spent forty years in hell. But it was different when he looked up and only saw Cass. He saw this face whenever he closed his eyes, and now it was staring at him, unfeeling and violently unaware. He had to look into those eyes, those blue eyes that had always looked at him with care and respect before, and now they looked as though they didn't recognize him.

Dean realized quickly he was going to have to hurry with his plan, otherwise he might be knocked unconscious. After all, Castiel wasn't even asking him anything, so this just seemed like a fun pastime for the angels. He was sure that once he'd been thoroughly rendered unconscious then he'd probably taken to a place a bit more intimidating than this well lit, mostly white ballroom and then they'd start asking questions.

'Raphael,' he began to pray. 'Raphael, if you can hear me, my name is Dean Winchester, and the prophet Kevin Tran needs your protection.' It was taking everything he had not to lose concentration and slip into the darkness tugging at his gut as Castiel continued to beat on his head. 'Raphael, there is no longer an archangel protecting him. Michael is gone. You must eliminate the threat. Please.'

A crashing sound echoed somewhere behind Dean, but he didn't even attempt to look, he just felt the relief of Castiel's raised fist aiming yet again at his head, but it never hit. Castiel was looking up at something, the crash, behind Dean. The angel let go of Dean's jacket and Dean fell limp but still conscious onto the ground.

The entire room was immersed in a white light that Dean had to spin his body and cover his eyes with his arms to avoid, every move of his neck shooting pain up in his skull. He'd never taken so many head injuries and was frankly a little surprised that he was still lucid.

He didn't open his eyes or move his arm. He just stayed there on the ground, shielding his face, waiting for whatever would happen next. He was a bit out of it after all, and was surprised he even managed to pray while Castiel was beating him down. 

He felt a hand, gentler than before, pull his arm away from his head and he tensed, but didn't struggle. This could be it. A hand went to cup the side of his face and he waited to feel his eyes burn out of his skull, but instead he felt a familiar healing glow.

His head stopped throbbing and screaming at him, and Dean opened his eyes to see what he hoped to see.

The man was slightly older than Dean had seen him, and he looked a bit gentler than the slightly crazed version he had met. But it was the first vessel he had seen when meeting with the archangel Raphael.

Dean sat up quickly, but Raphael didn't seem in much of a rush to stand. That was a good sign, it was another more humble angel. This world might be a bit swing and a miss with it's angels, but so far its archangels weren't failing to slightly impress the Winchester.

"I heard your prayer." Raphael said simply.

"Yeah it was a bit of a Hail Mary, you know?" Dean attempted to joke. 

He hadn't even noticed Kevin until he was also kneeling on the ground beside him and Raphael, already healed. "Dean are you okay? Where's Michael?"

"That's a long story. I promise, I'll explain, but right now we need to move on the Lance. Raphael, thank you for answering my prayer, but I was hoping we could ask you one more favor."

-

Michael blinked his eyes open. He looked down at his burning stomach and felt something else there, beneath his shirt. His jacket was lying next to him, and he was lying down on a bed in a well-lit room. As he reached to lift his shirt, he saw that his hands were cuffed. Enochian symbols, clearly he was not being trusted. Not that he could do much, but it did keep him from flying away.

He lifted his shirt to see bandages wrapped around his stomach, covering his wound. It made him laugh a bit as he remembered that it was exactly what Dean had wanted to do when he first showed him what Gabriel had done, but he told him that human bandages weren't going to do anything to help him.

Dean. What happened? Something to do with Dean, right? They were in the motel… no, they were in the forest, and Dean was going to go home…

That son of a bitch.

Michael attempted to stand up quickly, but he had only swung his legs over the bed into an upright position before his weakness and exhaustion caught up to him. If he had more of his powers and wasn't dying and wasn't cuffed and was in his own world and wasn't worrying about angels and wasn't worried for Kevin and wasn't terrified for Dean he would kill him. But, he didn't have his powers, he was dying, he was cuffed, he wasn't in his own world, he was worrying about angels, he was worried for Kevin, and he was terrified in general.

He was still going to kill Dean. Maybe a couple times for good measure. Right now, however, he was more concerned that Zachariah would beat him to it. There would probably be torture first, a lot of it, and it would probably come from the hands of Castiel, which opened up a whole new set of psychological problems Dean would have to deal with considering what he told him about the Castiel from his world.

But this was Dean's world, wasn't it? He used his own hair in the spell.

Michael looked up at the two men attempting to enter the room with him. One he didn't recognize, but could hazard based on his height and hair that did kind of look like it belonged to a princess that this was the brother Dean had told him about. And the other man was clear as day the angel Castiel. Michael scooted further back in the bed, drawing his legs back onto the bed and up to his chest like a defenseless child. The logical part of his brain had just acknowledged they were in Dean's world, and Dean had spent a lot of time telling him and Kevin about how kind and caring this Castiel was, but seeing him was another thing entirely. The logical part of his brain flew out the window.

"Adam?" Sam asked tentatively, staying about a foot away from the bed to give him space.

Cass had recognized his angelic form beyond the vessel right away, but he didn't expect Sam to see what he saw. And what he saw was a vessel who was more angel than human, and likely had been for a while.

"Not anymore." Michael answered dryly. Come on, this was Dean's world. His family, the ones he'd droned on and on about for the last month. But it was still difficult to put that knowledge into practice. After all, the only reason he'd trusted Dean so quickly was because Kevin said he saved his life and had been adamant that Dean stay with them. And though Dean had vouched for both the men in front of Michael over and over, right now Michael was alone, and he wasn't too keen on trusting people quickly.

"Michael, we're not going to hurt you." Sam reasoned with a reassuring smile on his face. Damn, he could see why Dean loved his little brother so much.

"Tell that to him." He jerked his head at Castiel. "You've been pretty happy to hurt my friends."

He could see Castiel shift uncomfortably, and he really was desperately trying to convince himself that this was the kind-hearted angel Dean was secretly in love with and not the sadistic soldier who had ripped the arm off of Dean Two after murdering his family and tossing him around his own house. The one who confessed to Anna's murder, the one who had tricked them into leaving Kevin alone for the taking. The one who was probably somewhere, torturing the very Dean Winchester who was in love with him. 

"I promise you, I'm not going to hurt you. And I'm not the man who hurt your friends."

Michael couldn't help himself. "You're right, you're the man who murdered an innocent family and killed a man by ripping his arm off." The glare the archangel sent him must have been filled with all the rage he had been feeling, because he watched as Castiel took a step back.

"Michael, we think you come from another world. You came here through a rift and,"

"I didn't want to come here." Michael snapped at the giant man. "My world is in danger. Humanity is in danger. My friends are in danger. And I'm going to…" he trailed off. 

What exactly was he going to do? He'd laid out the rules to Dean. The angels locked anything from this world, dammit, Dean's world, out of his own. How the hell did Dean think he was going to go home now? How did he think Michael was going to get home?

"I can't believe it." Michael muttered out loud, to himself. "That damn idiot, he's banking on my brother."

It would make sense, he'd only recently asked Michael about Raphael. The fool probably planned on getting Raphael and killing, well, three angels with one stone. 

It wasn't a horrible idea in concept. If Raphael came to him, he would be able to easily kill off Zachariah's small little garrison, including that pesky Castiel, he'd have more than enough ability to break his Lance in half and save his life, and he'd be able to give them grace in spades for opening a billion rifts if they wanted.

The problem was, even if Raphael came to help them in the ballroom, Michael wasn't sure they'd be able to convince him to break the Lance or give them his grace. Raphael didn't like the messy things, or the difficult things. 

"Your brother?" Sam asked, though he probably had a hundred other more pressing questions to ask. Like, what the hell is going on?

"It's been a long year. An even longer month. Though you two can probably relate." Michael shut his eyes and let his head roll back and hit the wall behind him.

"What do you mean by that?" Castiel's voice was stony and strong, and any but of distancing Michael might have been convincing himself to make between this Castiel and the other one melted in a single shockwave of fear and intimidation.

"Go to hell." He hissed at him. It was immature, something Kevin would say, but Michael was sure he was passed keeping up intimidating pretenses. The first sight Castiel got of him was him collapsing on the floor. 

"Whoa, let's calm down. We seriously haven't done anything to you, Michael." Sam attempted to mediate. "You're not the Michael that we know, and he's not the Castiel you know."

Michael rubbed at his forehead, annoyed by his hands cuffed together. "You know I don't need these right? I'm practically powerless."

"Yeah, but you understand why we don't exactly trust you." Sam reasoned. Michael wanted to be mad but he was just tired.

"I do understand, and I'd probably be trying to kick your ass, if I weren't so weak."

Sam let out a little laugh and shared a look with Castiel.

"What?" Michael asked, annoyed.

"It's just an archangel saying 'kick your ass'. It's not common."

"Yeah, well, I've been spending a lot of time with people who aren't common. And now I've lost them both."

Castiel spoke up, afraid of invoking the archangel's anger again, but pressing on nonetheless. "We know the spell to open a rift. If you wanted to go back to your world, you could do that with your grace."

"Thanks Sherlock. If that was possible, do you think I'd be engaging in small talk?" Michael was pissed, but this time it was more bratty than justice-of-a-warrior. But Castiel got an odd, sad look on his face. "What is it this time?"

Castiel stared at Sam. "It's nothing, it's just something Dean used to say sometimes." The words weren't even directed at Michael, considering that Castiel, Cass, Michael told himself, didn't know Michael knew Dean.

In fact, the sadness in his tone actually made it easier for Michael to start convincing himself that this really wasn't the violent angel he had encountered so many times. Maybe it was that realization that told him to stop keeping information from them. He had been deriving a little bit of pleasure from keeping his friendship and knowledge of Dean's situation from them, it made him feel like he had a bit of power, but the more he was refocusing his sights on this world in particular, the more he knew that they genuinely cared about Dean Winchester.

"He doesn't say it 'sometimes'. He says it all the time. Like, at any and all opportunities to say it." Michael conceded his information with a joke, smiling while thinking of those hunts Dean took him and Kevin on. How happy Kevin had been to be useful and distracted from angelic problems.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Sam's eyes were wide and Cass had abandoned all reservations about being near the archangel, standing with his legs pressed up against the foot of the bed.

"How do you think I got here? Rifts only open to a specific place when you put something that's been in that world in the spell, or if you're summoning something, and last I checked, summoning spells don't plop archangels on your doorstep." Sam and Cass shared a wary, confused, but slightly hopeful look that Michael was tired of suffering through. "Dean Winchester, your Dean Winchester, was summoned to my world. You lost him a little over a month ago, right?"

Michael spilled into the story, leaving out most of the details. He didn't mention Castiel specifically, just a remaining Gabriel garrison, he explained how Kevin accidentally summoned Dean because he was the Michael Sword, he explained why he was weak and dying, and how everyone was after the Lance. He could see Cass tense up when he mentioned the Lance, but he didn't ask.

"When the angels kidnapped Kevin, I flew Dean to where they took him, but he tricked me. He made the rift, convincing me he was going to go through, but he pushed me in instead. And that's where we are."

"You're saying Dean is walking into a trap, completely alone, with no resources and no plan?" Cass's eyebrows were raised, as though he were incredibly worried but annoyed at his own lack of surprise.

"Exactly. He probably didn't think he could risk me dying. But I don't think he's going to walk out of there alive, considering I'm pretty sure his plan is banking on convincing my brother to help him, and my brother hates conflict."

Cass and Sam walked to the doorway. 

"I don't know Cass, can we trust him? He left out a lot of stuff in that story. What did he mean, one of the angels killed 'someone of interest'?"

Cass glanced over at the archangel who still didn't look like he trusted him. "I don't like it either, Sam, and he's definitely not telling us everything, but theoretically, the kind of spell he claimed Kevin used to steal Dean would work. I've never seen it done, but summoning his weapon through dimensions? Dean would be,"

"Free game?" Sam posited. He rubbed a hand down his face. "Well, if he's telling the truth or not, we should find that out for ourselves. I'm going to go out, try to get the ingredients for a rift spell. If Dean really is over there, we have to at least try to get him back."

"Sam, you heard what he said, we can't get over there."

"Cass I have to try." Sam's eyes were pleading with him and Cass just sighed in response and watched as Sam disappeared down the hall.

Cass went back into the room and sat on the chair they'd placed near the bed. Michael raised an eyebrow at him.

"Are you playing guard duty? No offense, but it's not like I have anywhere to go."

"You mean offense."

"Sorry?"

"You meant offense. You hate me, don't you? Am I one of those angels that you're fighting?"

Michael sighed, being swayed by Cass's earnestness. "You're the worst one, and you're not even in charge. That murder I accused you of? When I said you ripped someone's arm off? It was Dean Winchester's. You tortured that poor man, and killed him violently." For a moment, with the panic he saw on Cass's face, he completely forgot that he ever distrusted him. "Don't worry, not your Dean Winchester. The Dean from my world. I didn't know him, but we came in time to watch you kill him. He had been long since retired from hunting, and he had a wife, and she had a son."

"Lisa and Ben Braeden?"

Michael nodded and watched as a dark look covered the angel's face. "I take it that didn't end well over here?" Cass's silence was all the answer he needed.

Dean told him why he loved Cass, and if Michael squinted past the face of a cold-blooded killer, he could see why. When Cass looked sad, his features that had struck fear in Michael before, were now aiding in helping him seem less threatening. His bright blue eyes which had before been sharp and filled with hate, were now shiny and downcast. He just seemed more human.

"I'm sorry." Michael gave up. "I know it's not you." He paused thoughtfully as Cass didn't react. "Dean knows it's not you, too. In fact, he spent a lot of time convincing me that I could trust you and Sam. I never thought I'd need to, but, well, here I am."

Cass looked up at the archangel. He seemed so defeated, so upset, and he finally understood why. "You're worried about them, aren't you?"

"Of course." Michael blinked like he was offended by the question. "Dean and Kevin are my family. I know it's only been a short amount of time, but I get the feeling he has that effect on people." Cass snorted in amused agreement.

"Dean Winchester is an interesting human. He cares so much about everything."

"He sure cared about me and my world. He didn't owe us anything, and we gave him an out. We gave him a way home, and he didn't take it. Hell, when he had the chance to take it, he shoved me through instead! Maybe it's punishment for ever assuming Dean would back down from a fight."

"I don't think he knows how to." Cass's voice was small.

Michael started to adopt a bit of that teenage-girl-prying that he hadn't expected when he saw this as an opportunity to spy on his best friend's crush. "So, he's your friend?"

"He's more than my friend!" Cass answered quickly, but realized what he said when Michael raised his eyebrows at him. "Now, that's not what I meant. He's my family."

Michael laughed. "Okay, okay. Sorry. He thinks very highly of you, just so you know." He watched as Cass turned to him, trying to hide his excitement. Hook, line, and sinker.

"Really?"

"Oh yes. He was always reminding us that you weren't anything like your much worse counterpart." Michael let up on his mini prying investigation. "I could tell he really missed this place."

Cass offered him a small smile. "Well, we really missed him. I understand why he didn't come back, he's a self-sacrificial man. I just, well, I don't care if he comes back a failure. I just care that he comes back."

Cass was surprised to feel a hand on his arm. Michael was getting better at this comfort thing. 

"Cass, I understand your loyalty and devotion to Dean."

Cass wasn't sure he did. Hell, he wasn't sure if he understood it himself. All he knew was that he loved Dean Winchester. He loved him more than anything in the entire world, and he'd sacrifice himself for him in a second. Because to him, Dean was the entire world. Without him, the place felt hollow and empty. There was nowhere he could go that he would feel happier. The happiest place he could be in was the backseat of the Impala, or in a perfect universe, Dean's arms. Dean probably wouldn't feel that way, but it didn't matter to him. 

"He really loved you, you know?" Michael admitted. He wouldn't give away the truth, that Dean was in love with the angel, but he wanted to see this Cass for himself. See if he was deserving of Dean's love.

And he was a bit surprised to see Cass look up at him with teary eyes. "I know he did, but it's…"

Oh god. Michael couldn't believe it, but he prompted further. "Cass, do you… love him?"

"Of course, he's my,"

"Don't!" Michael warned as Cass rapidly went into the friend story. Though there was still a possibility Cass wasn't in love with Dean, the more time that went on the less he believed it. "What's the truth?"

Cass was caught off guard. Something about Michael's bluntness was actually comforting, perhaps because it felt so familiar. So he looked him directly in the eyes and just said "I'm in love with him."

As Cass realized what he said he shot out of his chair and Michael had to stifle a laugh as a cough, refusing to give away his knowledge of Dean's feelings. "I can't believe I just said that. I'm so sorry, that's incredibly inappropriate and creepy, I know."

"I don't think so." Michael added honestly. "Look, Cass, if how terrified I am for his well-being right now is in any way close to how scared you've been this past month, then can I just give you a piece of advice?" Cass just nodded, his eyes wide and still looking scared and embarrassed. "You love him? Do something about it. It doesn't matter if he loves you in that way or not, what matters is what you don't tell him. And it will kill you if you never tell him."

Cass sat back down, slowly letting himself be reassured that Michael wasn't going to make fun of him. "I'm not sure, I don't think Dean would be comfortable if I told him."

"I think that's bullshit. You said you know he loves you, even if it's as a family? Then how can you think someone who loves you would ever shut you out, no matter how much you embarrass yourself? And Cass, if he doesn't come back, how are you going to feel? If you never get the chance to tell him the truth?"

That had been Cass's biggest fear. Michael just bringing it up again made his hands start shaking. Everything he'd done since he pulled Dean from hell had been for him. What would he do if Dean wasn't coming back?

He didn't like admitting it, but Michael was right. Keeping this secret from Dean wasn't making him feel any better. And the idea that he'd carry it with him forever if he never saw Dean again made his chest constrict.

Michael smiled as he watched the angel run his hands through his hair, looking sad and conflicted. He wasn't happy to see him distressed, but he couldn't help but think 'These idiots. These actual, literal, dumbasses.'


	9. Chapter 9

"I just can't believe he's dead." Kevin stared at his hands. Dean, Kevin, and Raphael were now settled down in a circle on the floor of the ballroom. It was almost comical, if the situation weren't so critical.

They weren't worried about the angels returning anytime soon, so they hadn't left yet, and Raphael was just sitting silently as Dean explained their situation. He had to pause halfway, realizing that Kevin didn't know what Castiel had done to Dean Two.

"I'm sorry Kevin. The second Castiel stepped foot in his house, he was doomed."

Kevin was shaking his head, tears welling in his eyes. Dean hadn't even had quite the emotional reaction, and he stood over his own mangled dead body. But he realized that Kevin spent some time with him, and Dean Two just gave him the Impala, so they probably became pretty fast friends.

"When he gave me the Impala, he said that I didn't have to thank him, I just had to protect him. From the angels. And I couldn't protect him for twenty four hours."

Dean leaned over and put his hand on Kevin's shoulder. "This isn't your fault. None of us could have stopped it. He would have killed Dean and his family whether you went to his house or not."

Raphael hadn't said much, or really changed his expression, but he hadn't gotten up to leave, and Dean would take that as a win. He would take this whole night as a win, if he weren't so scared of what Raphael would say when he finally asked his next question. 

"Hey, Raphael, are the angels…?"

"Dead?" He turned his head, still looking indifferent and unbothered. It was a bit annoying, considering Dean was hoping he'd be able to gauge where Raphael's head was at from the start. "Two of them are. One survived, barely escaping."

"Let's hope it's Samandriel, because if it's Zachariah or Castiel then we're still in a world of trouble." Kevin pointed out. Dean rolled his eyes exasperatedly, nodding in agreement. Raphael may have healed him but after that beatdown he wasn't too keen on seeing Castiel, and if Zachariah survived then who knows how many more of Gabriel's angels he could gather, and Dean didn't want to be put back at square one.

"That's why I wanted your help, Raphael. Look, I know that something happened to you, and it sucks, and you hate conflict, but if I could just-"

"I'll do it."

Dean and Kevin both shared a suspicious glance. "I'm sorry?"

Raphael stood up, brushing himself off, still looking unbothered. "Nothing has changed. I'm not even tied to your prophet yet, I just answered your prayer. And I don't like the idea that there's a surviving angel out for my head. However, Michael has always been kind to me." For the first time, Raphael's face actually shifted. It was a kind of look that entailed that he was thinking of a memory fondly, but it was now shrouded in sadness. "And both things you're asking of me are for him. If I break his Lance, it will save his life. Then if I give you my grace, he can come home."

"We'd understand if you didn't want to help us." Kevin offered, and Dean hoped Raphael wouldn't suddenly change his mind and take him up on the out he was giving him, but thankfully, Raphael just shook his head. 

"I never liked Gabriel's ideas for how to handle humanity. I live among them, I have a job and a house. But I'm certainly not going to be the one to take control of the angels and of heaven. I'm not a leader, but Michael is. So I save him now, and he will lead well." Raphael reached a hand down to help Kevin off the floor, and Dean stood with him.

Dean clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "Alright! Team Save Michael is a go! Now Kev, I think it's time you finally told me where you hid that Lance."

-

Cass came into the room again, and Michael was looking worse. "Is there anything I can do?"

Michael offered him a small smile. "Unless you can smack Dean Winchester on the back of his head for sending me here." He saw Cass's already feeble smile crumble at the mention of his friend and he felt a little guilty. He was a bit impatient to see how things played out when they were reunited, considering he was apparently the only person who knew they both loved each other, so they should just get on with it already.

"I wish I could. I wish he could be here so I could tell him how monumentally stupid this whole thing is." Cass sat back down in the chair beside him. "But then again, Dean and I have both spent a lot of time chastising each other for doing stupid things, and it hasn't worked before."

Michael drummed his fingers on the bed softly. "I'm useless." His voice was barely a whisper. "Ever since Kevin summoned Dean, I've been useless. I'm just dead weight."

"Michael that's certainly not true. You told me that they need both the Lance and you in order to save your world."

"So what, I'm supposed to sit here, dying, stranded in another world, while they do all the painful parts? All the heavy-lifting, all that torture and pain, and then once they've done it, I'll rule over heaven with no conflict? How is that fair to them?"

Cass sighed, running his hands through his hair. He knew too well the dangers of letting yourself think you're useless when you're weak or on the bench. He'd been driven so mad by feeling like he wasn't contributing that he'd said yes to Lucifer. And that decision hadn't exactly been the best.

"Michael, I implore you not to do this to yourself. You're hurt, and there is little you can do. That's been me a dozen times, and it's driven me to some incredibly poor decisions. But something I know about Dean Winchester is that he isn't stupid. He's emotional, and he has emotional reactions, but they aren't stupid. He wouldn't have sent you here where he knew you'd be safe simply out of stupid emotions. He must have been confident that they could, or perhaps needed to, do this without you."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

"I know. Believe me, I know." Cass let out a bitter laugh. "But your presence and leadership is going to save your world, so maybe you should just sit back and let Dean save you. It's what he's best at, I promise you that."

Michael smiled back at him. "I suppose I should be glad we got to borrow him for a little while, huh? It's only been a month and he's already setting my world back on track." He paused for a moment, deciding he owed Cass the truth. "Cass, you must be prepared for something. If Dean comes back, there's a pretty good chance that you did something horrible to him over there in my absence. Even if he managed to convince my brother to help them, it certainly wouldn't be without a fight. I'm trying to say, it might be hard for him to see you and understand that you're not his enemy."

Cass had been worrying about that since Michael told him about his alternate self. After all, Dean watched as Castiel ripped his own arm off, albeit the arm of a Dean that he currently wasn't. It was all a bit confusing. And while losing Dean was still the worst outcome, he had been preparing for seeing a Dean that was scared of him, or hated him. That sounded like the worst thing in the world.

It was the way Dean looked at him when he released the souls from Purgatory. The way Dean looked at him when he bore the Mark of Cain. The way Dean looked at him when he beat him under Naomi's control. The way he looked at him when the angels implored Cass to kill Dean during his battle against Metatron. The way he looked at him with intimidation, hatred, and fear. Cass didn't want to look into Dean's eyes and see a man looking back at the angel like he was a stranger. Just thinking that broke him in half.

"Cass?" Michael prompted. "He'll do everything in his power not to make that happen, you know that right? He's trying so damn hard over there to remind himself that it's not you."

"But you don't know what that Castiel has done to him since you last saw him. Or what he's doing to him now."

"Maybe not, and maybe Dean won't be able to look you in the eye right away, but I had my own reasons to hate you and I came around. Fairly quickly, I might add." The last bit was more of a brag than anything else.

Cass wanted Dean to come home. It didn't matter what state he was in, or even if he didn't want to be anywhere near the angel. As long as Dean was safe, however hard it might be, Cass could walk away if he needed to. Even if he spent the rest of his life hating Cass, at least he'd have the rest of his life to live.

But it didn't make it any easier.

-

"We are so screwed." Dean was staring at Kevin, his jaw on the ground. 

When he asked for the location of the Lance, he hadn't been expecting a fucking 'I don't know'. He certainly hadn't been expecting him to confess to hiring a demon to hide it so that the information couldn't be tortured directly from him.

"Not necessarily!" Kevin scrambled to make the situation better, clearly a little guilty. "We can summon him again!"

"I don't like demons." Raphael's voice was small and Dean hated to hear it, but it was frightened. 

Tabling that likely-to-end-badly discussion, Dean turned back to Kevin. "What's the name of the demon? Did you have a deal where they'd give it back."

"I didn't think that far ahead. I'm sorry! When I hid the Lance I had a recently injured archangel on the couch in my basement! Angels were on my ass, and I didn't have time to think! All I knew was I couldn't just stash a deadly weapon behind a dumpster! So I went to a crossroads and trapped this demon until she agreed, which she was very happy to do."

"That's not a good sign, Kevin!" Dean was getting more and more angry but he knew he had to settle his nerves. Where exactly could Kevin hide this thing anyway? He'd been right about not having an abundance of options. "Did she say where she'd take it?"

"She said that her boss would love it. And that she was taking it to him in Hell."

"Michael's Lance is in Hell?! You can't be serious!"

"She said it'd be safe with her boss Crowley."

Dean couldn't believe it. Crowley. Crowley had been dead for years, and now he was about to have to beg him for an extremely valuable weapon just so they could break it.

It was almost funny, considering Crowley was the one who broke it in Dean's world. But if this world was like his own just without an apocalypse, there would be no telling what kind of demon Crowley was. He had no influence from the Winchesters, and he certainly wouldn't be compelled to help.

"So we have to go to hell to get it from him." Kevin continued.

Dean saw Raphael open his mouth, a bit of panic in his eyes, but Dean spoke before he could protest. "No. I will go to hell to get it from him. You two will stay up here, unbothered and completely safe."

He wasn't going to ask Raphael to go with him, their alliance was already shaky at best, and it was clear that Raph had some… issues that Dean hadn't even started to think about. And as for Kevin…

"There's no way you're going in there alone. That's not happening. And you're not going to logic your way out of this one, Dean. Two is better than one and you know it, especially considering breaking the Lance is quite possibly the only option we have left to save Michael. Raphael can stay up here and keep the doorway open and then at least one of us will re-emerge with the Lance."

Dean bit back a more emotional response that he wanted to have. "I'm sorry, but you're not going Kevin. That's final." Before Kevin could open his mouth again, Dean went on. "I had to catch Michael off guard and push him into another universe to keep him from getting himself killed. And I'm not going to do that to you, but don't think I wouldn't try." It was a thinly veiled threat, in a very obvious manner. "Look, Kev, this is a last ditch effort. We're on our last chance. And if we both get trapped in hell, Michael will die and your world will be quick to follow. I can't be worried about you down there, and you damn well I will worry. So you're staying here, or you'll have to kill me and go yourself."

The challenge was harsh and scarily honest. Dean Winchester really was incredible at backing people into corners, so Kevin shut his jaw-hanging mouth and they prepared the spell necessary to open the gate to hell.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean walked slowly down the steps. This world's Hell felt the same as his own, and as always he didn't want to be here.

There were a lot of worst-case scenarios to be considered. He could be captured on the steps and added to that all too familiar rack, he could get a beat down by the King's guards and imprisoned by him personally, or he could make it to Crowley only for him to snap his neck and trap his soul here for eternity.

Truth was, maybe he had taken his relationship with Crowley for granted. True, Crowley was not to be trusted. He was a conman and a murderer, he'd practically tortured Kevin for months, threatened to kill Jody Mills, held Bobby's soul hostage, and kept Lucifer as his personal pet rather than tossing him back in the cage. But he had done a lot for them too.

After all, Crowley had possessed Sam to convince him to kick Gadreel out, he'd protected them from having to fight Abaddon, he kept his word when it came to bringing them the First Blade when Dean bore the Mark, he helped call off a rogue hellhound attacking an innocent girl, he sacrificed his life in an attempt to seal Lucifer in Apocalypse World, and he'd broken Michael's Lance once before to save Cass's life. Sure, maybe a lot of the good he did was to mop up his own messes, but most of what the Winchesters did was mopping up their messes, so he felt he couldn't really judge him on that.

But Crowley was a demon, a demon he wasn't sure he could trust in any universe or any stage of life. And right now, this Crowley seemed to be at the height of his evil empire. Which spelled out bad things for Dean and for this entire world he'd devoted his time to saving.

He reached that familiar hall, lined with creepy statues leading to large double doors that would take him to the throne room. What was unsettling was that everything seemed empty. He'd passed no demons on the stairs, and there were no demons jumping from the shadows as he approached the door.

He wasn't sure what got a hold of him, but against his better nature and personality, he knocked.

He waited a moment before the doors were opened before him. They were opened by two unfamiliar meatsuits in a room full of unfamiliar demons. Well, "full" wasn't the word he'd use. There were three two demons opening the door, and for more standing with their backs pressed against the wall, hands overlapping themselves in a patient, preserved, guarded, warrior like stance that was more reminiscent of angels. They must have been guarding the room as all of them had the same, non-reacting faces. They stood, two to a wall, opposite from each other, two on his right and on his left. But directly in front of him was the throne of Hell, and lounging on top of it was the all too familiar meatsuit that he'd come to know as the demon Crowley. 

Crowley sat slouched, one leg tossed over the arm of the throne. He held a glass of scotch in one hand, and the other was dangling off of the side, absently petting what Dean could wager was a hellhound, invisible but breathing loudly on the floor.

"Well, isn't this a nice surprise." It was odd to hear Crowley's voice again, a voice he never thought he'd hear. But this entire month had been people that had been dead showing up and trying to kill him, so the lack of effort coming from the literal King of Hell was a breath of fresh air.

"Crowley I presume?" Dean wasn't sure what to say, he hadn't exactly rehearsed this conversation on the way down.

"Oh please, Dean, you don't presume anything. You know exactly who I am, don't you, Squirrel?"

Dean froze. How the hell did he know to call him that? Squirrel was a joke in tandem with Moose, and there was no way that this Crowley met this Sam Winchester.

"How did you…?"

"Where are my manners, hey you! Vermin! Grab my friend a seat and a glass!" Crowley shouted at one of the demons lining the wall. "Are you deaf? Now!" There it was, that familiar Crowley yell. That angry, starting the sentence sarcastically and ending in a shout. It made Dean a bit nostalgic.

The demon did as he was told, and Dean simply sat down in the chair and lifted the glass to his mouth. He figured that his normal Dean Winchester brand of you-can't-fucking-tell-me-what-to-do wouldn't win him any favors. That was the advantage to knowing his Crowley first, he knew that Crowley would play ball if you didn't chuck it over the fence.

"If you know who I am, you probably know why I came here."

Crowley nodded slowly, staring at his half empty glass as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. "Yes, as I know you've been galavanting around the country with a prophet and an archangel. What's that saying, 'a man is known by the company he keeps'?"

Dean wasn't sure how to respond. The entire situation was baffling, it felt more like an encounter with his own Crowly, back from the dead to taunt him, then a Crowley he hadn't known. He chose not to say anything and wait for Crowley to reveal what he wanted from him. After all, he seemed to have all the information he needed, so it was going to circle around to the Lance eventually.

"You know Dean, you fascinate me. You show up in this world with an invitation from a prophet and suddenly you're trying to be announced prom queen, running around trying to protect your little boyfriends. I think it's quite cute. So I did some studying of my own, took a little peep into your history. And do you know what I saw?"

The realization dawned on Dean, though he wasn't sure if this was going to damn him or save him. "You."

"Exactly. You were shacking up with me, the bloody King of Hell. And let me tell you, I'm not sure I'm overly impressed with him. He never got what it meant to be a King, a true King, you know?"

"He tried his best."

"Oh please. He killed himself and spent his time moping about on earth. Pathetic. He was so, collosally stupid. I'm embarrassed to share his name, and his debonair smile." Crowley, while insulting Crowley, was still so utterly Crowley.

"So what does that mean for me? Are you going to give me the Lance or not?"

"Oh, you mean this one?" In a blink of an eye, the Lance was now laying flat on top of Dean's lap. Dean stared at it in shock, and he clutched it tightly with the hand that wasn't holding his drink. "It's all yours darling. But you may want to run along." Dean raised an eyebrow, wanting to say something, anything sarcastic like he usually would but desperately not trying to push his luck. "That Lance is only as good as the archangel you've got trotting around upstairs, and his clock is ticking. It's been a lovely chat, but I've got better things to do, like kicking babies and passing out virgins. Have a great trip back home!"

Crowley flicked his wrist and Dean's chair went skidding backwards. He clutched onto the side of it, dropping his glass and hearing it shatter on the floor as the chair whisked him out of the throne room and the doors slammed shut in front of him.

He stood up, Lance in hand. What the hell just happened?

-

Kevin paced around nervously as Raphael just stood watching him. It didn't help that he could feel the archangel's eyes boring into his soul, which they could probably literally do.

"Maybe I should go down there. What if he's getting tortured?"

"He only left forty eight seconds ago." Raphael's voice was calm and reassuring, but his word choice was condescending as hell and Kevin just wanted all of this to be done. No more hell, no more Lance, no more dying or traumatized archangels. Just Kevin, out hunting with Michael, fully healed and healthy and powerful, taking occasional trips to heaven to keep the Host in line. That was it.

Of course, he didn't completely like this outcome. Because there was no way this ended where he would get to continue his hunting with Dean.

Kevin loved having Dean Winchester around. He had become attached to him very quickly and had been dreading losing him as he would go back home. And Kevin wanted him to go home and be happy and be with his brother and even that god-forsaken Castiel, as long as Dean was happy. But Kevin really didn't want to have to say goodbye.

He wasn't sure how he was going to feel about Dean Winchester when this was all finished. After all, the death of Dean Two was still on his mind. He had been kind to him, he trusted him with his beloved car. He asked him to protect him, and to kill Castiel for Anna. But he hadn't been there. He hadn't seen what had been done to him and his family and it was too late now, and it was probably too late then.

"What exactly is your plan, should he not resurface with my brother's Lance?" Raphael asked in a reserved manner. Kevin blinked at him, he hadn't thought about itm he'd been so busy thinking about the consequences that he hadn't been coming up with a plan B, because he hadn't wanted to think of a life without Michael by his side.

"I'm not sure," he replied honestly. "Getting the Lance is all about restoring Michael's power. Gabriel's angels don't need the Lance to win, they just need Michael gone. But we need Michael and his Lance. We need an archangel to command the Host of Heaven again. Michael's it. Unless of course you've changed your mind in the last hour, which I doubt."

Raphael had the decency to look ashamed at that. "I'm sorry that I'm not who you'd want me to be."

"What happened to you? Really, what could Lucifer possibly have done to you to make you run out on your family? Abandon a world that you could be helping?"

Raphael twitched under Kevin's scrutinizing glare. Usually Kevin wasn't one for dragging up old wounds, and he knew Dean wouldn't be too happy with it, but Dean wasn't here. And neither was Michael. And if Dean didn't pop back up then he wouldn't get either of them back, so looking at the archangel in front of him, avoiding his gaze by taking a moment to feed the spell, he felt angry. 

It probably wasn't a justified reaction, but he wanted a reason. Should he have to lose both of the people in his family, he'd also have to be the only one of them to watch Gabriel's angels slowly burn humanity into the ground, and now he was staring directly at someone who had the power and influence to easily prevent that without all these extra steps that were getting them nearly killed, and getting innocent people actually killed. If Raphael flew up to heaven right now he could take care of all of this, but he would also have to do so continuously, and Kevin doubted he could get the archangel to face the Host once, let alone repeatedly for the rest of eternity.

"He didn't just hurt me." Raphael finally answered in a very small voice. "He snapped his fingers and I blew up. I was a pile of blood and imploded grace. My father rebuilt me easily, but I didn't forget."

Kevin nodded slowly, feeling a little guilty for asking. He recalled Dean telling him of Lucifer doing a similar thing to his Castiel the day they were preventing their apocalypse. It sounded like nasty business.

"I'm sorry. But your father remade you and Lucifer has been locked away for years!"

"It doesn't make it easier." Raphael snapped his head to Kevin giving him a warning stare. "You're human. You understand mortality, but I was an archangel. A creation of my father, supposed to be the strongest thing in creation next to him, alongside my brother. But I was young, and I hadn't even comprehended the length of eternity when my brother, supposedly my equal, shattered me." Raphael's body shook a bit as he spoke. "To be so powerful and still realize you are nothing, it's not easy to overcome."

Kevin felt worse for bringing it up, and he realized he couldn't actually be angry at the guy. I mean, Kevin had only been hit a few times by Castiel and he could already feel nightmares forming at the image of his face in his mind. Zachariah's creepy smile had etched itself into his dreams every night for longer than Dean had been with them.

Before he could say anything, not entirely sure if it would be an apology or a comfort, they heard the sound of flapping wings.

Castiel appeared before them, but he didn't look good. Most of his skin was covered in black burns, one of his eyes was just gone, and so was one of his hands. He looked like a corpse pulled out of the wreckage of a bombsite, but he stood there staring at them.

Raphael looked at him with concern and pity, seeing his angelic form beneath his vessel. "Brother, you're seriously hurt. Sit down, allow me to heal you."

"Heal me? You did this to me." Castiel's deep intimidating voice was even worse to hear. It was intense and guttural. "You only feel regret because I didn't die when you showed up."

"Castiel, please." Raphael's voice kept it's icy coolness as he spoke. "Zachariah is dead. Gabriel is dead. You don't have to follow anyone's orders any longer."

"Yes I do!" The shout that erupted from the broken angel reverberated off of the ballroom's walls. "We are soldiers of heaven. We are soldiers of God. We do not bow to cockroaches!" He pulled out a blade, the same one Michael had.

"Where did you get that?" Kevin piped in, getting more and more scared of the mangled vessel.

"This was Gabriel's. He was the strongest of all of you archangels, and I will be damned if I allow his legacy to be destroyed by those of you who sympathize with humans!" 

Kevin grabbed onto the bowl with the Hell-door spell defensively, not wanting whatever was about to happen lock Dean in Hell.

Castiel's eyes glowed blue and the chandeliers shook above them, the bulbs popping, sending little shards of glass down on them. Kevin huddled his frame around the bowl protectively. The shadow of Castiel's wings stretched out behind him and covered the grand walls of the room, but his wings looked more beaten and shredded than Kevin expected.

Directly across from him, Raphael did the same. His wings were grander and more full, and he turned to give Kevin a look, icy and intimidating with his glowing eyes, but also full of apology.

The room was filled with a bright white light as the angels fought, and it was their grace and essence fighting rather than their vessels. Keven was clutching the bowl, lying on his side around it, ducking his head into his chest, his back facing the angels, trying to block out the blinding light and ringing screams.

The noise finally died and he felt his eyelids unconsciously ease up at the loss of light. Kevin sat up and left the bowl on the floor.

Both angels were lying limp on the ground, unmoving and charred. Kevin ran over to Raphael, and he didn't need to turn him or scream in his face. His wings left a black print on the ground around him.

Raphael was dead.

What now? It was all hopeless again. They no longer had someone with them powerful enough to break the Lance, should Dean even come back with it or at all, and now they were out of archangels for the grace necessary to open a rift.

Michael was trapped over there. Dean was trapped here, or maybe even in Hell. 

He heard a groan coming from behind him and he spun, Raphael's blade in his hand. Castiel rolled over onto his back, but didn't make a move to stand. Kevin wondered if he even could.

That angel just wouldn't fucking die, would he?

Kevin walked over to the angel slowly and got down on a knee beside him. Castiel's eyes met Kevin's, but it was clear that there was nothing the angel could do.

Kevin grabbed the collar of his trenchcoat, though if he hadn't known the coat well he would have no idea what it was supposed to be as his attire had been ripped, burned, and shredded beyond recognition after now two narrow escapes with an archangel.

Using his single fist wrapped around his collar, Kevin lifted the man up above the ground and closer to him, warranting a sharp grunt of pain as Castiel let his head lull back, not having any strength left. Castiel's eyes were glazed and Kevin was a bit surprised seeing the angel so weak.

Dean Two's voice rang in Kevin's ear.

"Don't thank me, protect me alright?"

Kevin stabbed Raphael's archangel blade into Castiel's heart. He leaned in his head, already only inches from the angel's and whispered, "this is for Raphael."

Dean's voice again, "Kill those damn angels so I can sleep at night."

Kevin twisted the knife. "This is for Dean."

"Kill Castiel and tell him it's for Anna."

Kevin yanked the blade back out as white light poured through Castiel's eyes and mouth. "This is for Anna."

Kevin stood, dropping the angel on the floor and walking over his wing prints.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean found himself back in the ballroom, but something was different. He clutched the Lance tighter as he looked around.

The room had gone dark and there were bits of glass all over the floor. He saw Kevin sitting next to Raphael who was lying on the ground, wings spread out around him. He tried to ignore the dead image of Castiel across the room from them.

"Kevin?" Dean just whispered, terrified by the implications of what he was seeing. 

Kevin's head whipped up, having not realized Dean was in the room. A look of relief washed over his face as he scrambled to his feet, eyes switching between Dean and the Lance. But his face fell quickly as he saw Dean staring at Raphael's dead vessel. "Is he…?"

Kevin strode over to Dean and wrapped him in a hug, crying into his chest. The hunter immediately dropped the Lance and it clattered uselessly on the floor as he returned the embrace. Dean put a hand comfortingly on the back of the prophet's head and rested his chin on top, his eyes not leaving Raphael's body.

That was it. Raphael was their last hope, their last efforts were lying on the floor, dead. Michael was going to die within the week, and Dean was here now. He was here forever. He would never get to hug his brother again, tell him that he hadn't wanted to leave him, that he had no choice. He would never get to hold Cass ever again, never get to cup his face in his hands and kiss him. He found himself crying with the kid in his arms too as he realized he would never get to tell Cass he loved him, never get to be near him again.

How did they lose this? They had been trying so damn hard. It didn't matter that all the angels in Zachariah's garrison were gone, there would just be more. Nothing stood between them and civilization. But now everything stood between him and his family.

Except that this kid in his arms was his family too. And if Michael couldn't be here, then he had to be. He would take care of him.

"I hate to break up this little love fest mates, but there was something I forgot to tell you." That familiar, scratchy british voice came out of nowhere, and Dean released Kevin to turn and look at the demon Crowley, King of Hell, in front of him yet again, holding the Lance that Dean dropped on the ground.

Kevin gave Dean a confused look having never seen him before, but Dean answered him by wiping his face with the back of his sleeve and saying "what do you want Crowley?"

"Well that's a bit rude. I wanted you to go back to earth where you belong. And that's what I got."

Dean eyed the Lance in his hands. "You can have it. A lot of good it does us in one piece." Dean's words were dry and spiteful.

Crowley nodded at him, rolling his eyes. "There's that Dean Winchester zip. I'm not surprised that alternate Crowley liked you so much. That's what I forgot to tell you, I saw everything Crowley the Sequel did with you Winchesters and your pet angel. And I'm impressed."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "You called him pathetic and stupid."

Crowley waved a hand through the air. "Oh he was. Terrible, really, but I meant you. I'm impressed with you, Dean."

Dean raised his eyebrows and exchanged a surprised and confused look with Kevin. Crowley just let out a loud, dramatic, classic whiny Crowley sigh.

"Not the brightest though I see, but nevertheless, I would say that the one thing your Crowley got right in his miserable life besides the cute nicknames, was trusting and helping you. I specifically recall him doing this."

With one solid snap, Crowley had split the Lance in half. They watched as the two separate pieces clattered to the ground with shocked expressions.

Michael was alive.

"Why did you do that? Why are you helping us?" Kevin chimed in, a look of excitement on his face despite their still hopeless situation. The Lance being broken didn't mean anything for a world without Michael in it, but at least there was a world where he just got his strength back.

Crowley smiled at them. "It seemed interesting. Oh come on, you idiots! You didn't think I seriously wanted angels running the place? How do you think my deals are going to go when angels take over humanity? Hell thrives on human's unabashed free will and their chaos. Why would I ever want to jeopardize that?" Crowley brushed himself off as though destroying the Lance was hard work, but Dean didn't find himself complaining.

"Thank you." Was all Dean could manage, and he received a sarcastic bow for his efforts.

"You're very welcome. Now, there is the matter of me not wanting to have to deal with the angels, so I'll leave a token of my appreciation." He pulled a vial out of the air and held it out to Dean.

Dean took it and examined it. It was very clearly grace, and a lot of it. He looked at the demon, half-hopefully.

"Yes, in case you were wondering, that is archangel grace, specifically. Took a little from Gabriel, the prat."

"How did you get this?" Dean's voice got caught on his own breath.

"Never underestimate the King of Hell darling. I know a lot of swell tricks. Say hello to Michael for me! And of course, pleasure doing business with you." And Crowley was gone. For once m, Dean even looked around the room as though wanting to see him.

Kevin just stared at Dean in shock. "Did the King of Hell just solve all of our problems for us?"

"I can't believe it myself, Kev." He stared off to where Crowley had been standing. "But we're not out of the woods just yet, we need the other ingredients for the spell."

Kevin's face brightened even more. "We have plenty, I moved it into the trunk of the Impala before Samandriel kidnapped me."

"The Impala is back at the motel, and it's a couple days ride from here, but if I can find a car to hotwire, then…"

Kevin was grabbing his sleeve in excitement. "Dean, we've done it. The hard part's over. You get to go home, Michael gets to go home."

He gets to go home. The thought dawned on him as Kevin went to go pick up the pieces of Michael's Lance. He would get to go home, sleep in his bed again, finish Tombstone with Sam and Cass.

The excitement that fluttered in his heart at the idea of seeing Cass again didn't go unnoticed as he put his hand to his heart and smiled down at the ground.

They began to walk to the door when Kevin grabbed his elbow, stopping him. "We should take Raphael with us. Give him a proper goodbye when Michael comes back."

Dean nodded and they lifted Raphael in the air and carried him outside. There was a truck parked near the front of the building and they gingerly put Raphael in the backseat. As Kevin fastened the seatbelts around him, Dean went back in for Raphael's blade.

He knelt down by Castiel's body. It hurt more than he expected it to. This angel had spent the last month terrifying Dean, he beat the hell out of him and he hurt Kevin, not to mention the ruthless and disgusting way he killed Dean Two and his family. He should be happy to look down on his burned, mangled body, knowing he's finally gone.

But dammit, it didn't change anything to him. This was still the angel that pulled him from Hell, the angel he loved so much. At least, he looked like it. It hurt to stare at the person he loved more than anything and see them dead, bloody on the ground.

He noticed that Raphael's archangel blade was next to Castiel's body but not near his hands. Instead it was next to his upper arm, a few inches from where there was a clear wound in his heart. 

Vaguely aware of Kevin's presence behind him, Dean muttered, "you killed him?"

"I'm sorry, Dean, but he killed so many people and-"

Dean was able to regain his composure and awareness in time to interrupt Kevin's rambling. "Stop. Don't apologize. He was a violent sociopath and a monster." He turned and offered Kevin a weak smile. "He's not the Cass I know, because the Cass I know would never do any of the things he has done."

Kevin nodded to him gratefully, and offered him a hand up. "Do you want to take him too?"

Dean shook his head. "He's a stranger, Kev. Now, let's bring Michael home."

-

"Alright I just need your hair or something and then…" Kevin paused and Dean let him, they both knew what this meant. It meant that this was all over, it meant that they had finally saved the world. 

It meant that Dean got to go home and hug his brother and his angel.

It meant he'd have to say goodbye.

But not just yet. They'd agreed that they were going to use Gabriel's grace sparingly in case they needed to get a hold of each other in the future, so that they would never have to take grace from Michael. So the plan was to open the rift for a few seconds so Dean could go to his world, and then Kevin would wait an hour before opening another rift so that Dean could bring Michael back over and say goodbye. Kevin was the one who decided that Dean should wait and say goodbye to him when Michael went through, as if to extend the amount of time he had where Dean was within reach.

Dean handed Kevin one of his hairs and he watched as the prophet popped the cork off of the vial and poured in a splash of grace. He muttered the words and Dean saw a familiar golden tear inside their motel room.

"I'll see you in an hour." Dean shot him the biggest grin Kevin had ever seen on the man.

"I'll be here."

-

Sam was still on the road, and probably wouldn't get home for at least a day, so Cass was on archangel babysitting duty still.

Michael hadn't been here for that long, hell, it was probably less than a day, but Cass liked him. He sort of had to, now that he had accidentally blatantly shouted out to him about his love for Dean Winchester. But Michael was kind, even though he didn't need to be.

Michael had told Cass everything that happened. He told him about all the angels, and the hunting with Kevin, and the damn ham sandwiches.

The truth was, though Michael was nice to be around, he certainly wasn't the best at calming Cass's fears. At least he knew that Dean hadn't been dead for the last month, but it didn't make it better when the archangel would disparagingly mention his pessimistic opinions.

Michael was convinced that Kevin and Dean were dead. Tortured first, probably, until they managed to get Dean to admit that Michael wasn't in their dimension anymore, and then with that realization, Zachariah would have known that logically he wouldn't need the Lance anymore if Michael was kept from it, so he would have killed them. Bloody, probably.

But it changed when Cass was walking in the hall outside Michael's room and he heard him shouting. He immediately ran in to see the archangel lying on the bed, a glowing light coming from his torso where they had uselessly bandaged his wound. Cass ran to him and put his fingers on his head in an attempt to heal him, but he realized that something else was healing him so he stepped away.

When Michael's cries stopped, he spared Cass a silent but just as confused glance. He unwrapped his bandages to reveal that the wound was completely gone. It was healed.

"Does this mean that the Lance has been broken?" Cass asked tentatively.

Michael's eyes glowed that familiar blue as the shadow of his wings stretched out on the wall behind him, and Cass reveled in the beauty of his brother's healthy and full-powered visage.

"They did it." Michael's voice was barely a whisper. "Someone did it, at least." He curled and uncurled his fingers. "I can feel my power returning. Where was the rift that took Dean?"

Cass raised his eyebrows, realizing that Michael was insinuating that a new rift would be opening right now. They both got up and ran to the halls in between where they were watching Tombstone and the kitchen. There were two halls between the rooms and Cass and Sam weren't sure where Dean had been taken considering they never saw it happen and didn't even know he had been in an alternate universe until Michael showed up.

"It was somewhere here." Cass motioned when they got to the point where the halls intersected.

But there was no rift, no sound of Dean proclaiming he was home and asking if they missed him. And god, how Cass was missing him.

They stood there silently waiting for a rift to appear for about two hours before Michael leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, pulling up his knees and burying his head in his hands.

"What's wrong?"

Michael stared up at him. "The only way their half-assed plan would have worked is if my brother came to help them. And if that was the case, Raphael would have flown them back to the motel with the ingredients and they would have done the spell an hour ago." He looked distantly between the hallways again. "If it isn't done yet, it means Raphael didn't come to them."

Cass crouched down to be level with him. "But Michael, they broke the Lance."

"You don't know that! Kevin gave my Lance to demons. Any one of them could have decided to break it out of spite, not knowing it would help me! Dean and Kevin could be dead."

"No." Cass's voice was dark and almost angry, but Michael continued.

"Even if Dean and Kevin are fine and they were the ones to break my Lance, without Raphael I'm trapped here. There are no other archangels to turn to. I'll be here, alive, and Dean and Kevin will be swiftly killed off by the Host of Heaven as they take over the world."

Cass sank to the floor with him. "That isn't what happened. He isn't gone." Michael looked over at the angel with guilt. He had to remember that he wasn't the only one who might be losing their world.

He put his arm around Cass's shoulders as they sat side by side and absently drew circles on his shoulder. He saw Cass's eyes get wide as he did so. "Something wrong?"

"Dean used to do that. Whenever anyone got worked up, he would do that."

"I know." Michael let out a laugh. "I saw him do it to Kevin when things were getting overwhelming."

Cass sighed and his whole body relaxed with it. "I miss him."

"So do I, and I didn't know him half as long as you did. I think he has this effect on people he meets. It's probably because he's so damn selfless."

Cass offered his alternate world brother a smile, as sad and as weak as it was. "That's why I love him. I've failed him so many times and he's always forgiven me. Everyone fails him and he's always finding a way to come back from it. And I don't… I don't know what I'll do if he's gone. I don't even know where to start."

"Start small. He wouldn't want you to be upset and spend the rest of your days grieving him, he'd want you to be happy. So you can start by trying that."

-

It had been two days since Michael healed, and Cass found himself sitting between the halls every moment that Michael wasn't nearby. He felt self-conscious doing it, as if holding onto hope that Dean would come home was embarrassing.

Michael was convinced that Dean and Kevin were dead. It was hard, but having hope seemed a hell of a lot harder. 

He was trying to get his bearings. He'd only really been in Dean's world for three days, but considering he had already resigned himself to being trapped here he wanted to understand the place.

He spent most of his time around one of the tables, reading lore books about angels, like playing a very long and complicated game of spot the difference.

Cass had called Sam and told him what had happened, and what Michael assumed happened to Dean. Sam had been distant and quiet and said he probably wouldn't be home for a few days, and Cass couldn't blame him, he only told him to call if he needed anything.

It was about ten in the morning when Michael wandered toward the kitchen. He looked in the fridge, but stopped as he realized that he wouldn't like food anymore. He hadn't been hungry since he healed, but he hadn't noticed considering he hadn't even experienced hunger until a week or two ago.

But then he heard a noise. A familiar crackle came from just outside the kitchen and he ran to the doorway to see only a few steps away was a rift.


	12. Chapter 12

A rift, in the hall. One of the halls Cass pointed out to him. It had to be. "Cass!" He called, unsure if the angel was even within hearing distance.

Dean Winchester popped out of the rift directly in front of Michael, causing him to take a step back. It was definitely him, he was wearing the same clothes he wore when he last saw him in the woods three days ago.

Michael didn't hesitate or say anything in the form of a greeting as he pulled the man into a hug. It was unbelievable. Dean squeezed him back, happy to see Michael standing tall, less shaky and weak.

"Everything's fine!" Dean assured him without being prompted as he pulled away. "Kevin's alive and well and the whole garrison is dead. It's over. We won."

The rift closed behind them, but Dean didn't even turn to look at it and just smiled at Michael and shook his head, wordlessly informing him that it would open again.

"I suppose we have a lot to talk about." Michael spoke, but as he finished his sentence he looked up and saw Cass at the end of the hall, staring at them in shock, but Dean's back was toward him, and he hadn't even noticed. "I'll go gather some of my things and then I'll meet you back here in the kitchen so you can tell me everything." Michael was beaming, happy and relieved to have all the pressure taken off of him. He cast a nod at Cass before he turned away, informing Dean that someone was behind him.

Dean turned and faced the angel. Castiel. For a moment he could feel a scowl forming on his face, his mind screaming "how is he here?" But with one look into the angel's eyes, eyes that looked sorrowful and frightened, all of his fears and nightmares of the warrior Castiel melted away.

Cass watched as Dean turned to him and he waited for the worst. He waited for the screaming or the fear, and the first expression on his face showed distrust and anger. He had hoped that it would be different, but why would it be different? Castiel had hurt him, and Dean might never look Cass in the eyes again.

But he watched as Dean strode toward him and tensed up his body for a blow when he would meet him at the end of the hall.

Dean marched toward Cass with determination, determined to embrace the man he hadn't been able to stop thinking about since he'd last seen him. His heart and his lungs were aching, everything in his body screamed at him to run, get to him faster, to not spend another second without touching him. He had spent too long without him already.

Cass had started stammering before Dean reached him. "I'm so sorry, I understand if you hate me and want nothing-" but the angel was stunned into silence as Dean threw his arms around him, causing him to stumble backwards as he caught all of his weight.

It took a moment for Cass to realize that Dean was hugging him and not attacking him, and he felt Dean begin to pull away, probably because it wasn't being reciprocated, but Cass wasn't about to let that happen. He quickly wrapped his own arms around him and he dragged his body as close to him as he possibly could.

Dean felt Cass's arms pull him in tight and he melted into the man's embrace happily. He put one hand on the back of Cass's head, his fingers lost in his hair, and the other hand was clutching onto the angel's familiar trenchcoat, balling it up in his hand. Cass had both arms wrapped around Dean's back and he was clutching onto him, his fingers digging into his skin, but Dean wasn't complaining.

Cass pressed his face into Dean's neck, crying silently but roughly as he felt his whole body tremble, about to collapse. But Dean didn't let go, he wasn't ready to let go, he wasn't willing to let go. He had feared that when he came back to hug him that Cass would receive it awkwardly, or that he would be happy but pull away quickly, and Dean needed so much more, he needed the comfort he'd been missing for the month he was gone, but it seemed like Cass felt the same way he did, the same necessity that came with it.

He wanted to stay there forever, and the only thing that convinced him to finally pull away after Cass's body stopped shaking and the tears from both of them stopped falling was the want to see Cass's face. As he finally let go, he felt Cass's hesitation, so he continued holding onto him by the arms.

He looked at his face. It was Cass's face, and it made every bad thing about the other world's Castiel go away. He could finally look into his eyes and see him again.

"Dean, I've missed you so much. I didn't know what happened to you and I was going crazy, and then when Michael assumed you were trapped there I didn't know what to do." Cass's eyes hadn't left his, and they looked more desperate and emotional than Dean had ever seen them, and while a part of him liked seeing Cass care about him so much, he more felt guilty for ever causing the person he loved so much this much grief.

"Cass I'm so sorry." God, Cass wanted to cry just hearing his voice again. "I wanted to come back, I felt so horrible about staying and scaring you. I never meant to hurt you Cass, you got to believe me."

Cass blinked at him in disbelief. "Of course I believe you." And in one swift move Cass pulled him back into a hug, this time Dean buried his face into Cass's hair, and Cass was glad that the man couldn't see how red his face was becoming as he stroked his back. "I'm just so happy you're home."

Dean breathed a small sigh into the side of Cass's head. "I'm home." He repeated, for the benefit of them both.

-

Sam pulled the car over to the side of the road. He couldn't do this to Cass, he couldn't stay away just to avoid facing his own fears. He had to be there.

Sam wasn't blind or stupid. When Dean was home and safe, Sam had always enjoyed watching his brother and the angel. The ease with which they spoke to one another, the comfort they found in one another, the confidence they had around one another. It was family, of course, but not like brothers.

He noticed how close they sat and how neither seemed to care if they accidentally brushed their hands on each other's. One time, Dean fell asleep with his head on Sam and when he woke up he was red in the face and mumbling defenses for himself while Sam just laughed, but he had seen Dean fall asleep on Cass's shoulder, only to wake up, notice and move away like nothing happened at all. That wasn't the Dean Winchester he knew, the one who was constantly embarrassed of any signs of weakness.

It had always been this unspoken thing that Sam was sure one day one of them would accidentally say something too personal and the other one would stare at them and they'd realize they both loved each other the whole time and never said a word.

But seeing Cass so distraught since Dean disappeared had been hell like he hadn't imagined, because Cass had never told Dean the truth. Sure, maybe Cass wouldn't confide in him about it, but he didn't need him to. He just knew.

He saw how distant Cass had become and it made him realize just how much the two loved each other. Just how much they needed to be with one another, even if they were just friends for the rest of eternity, which Sam knew neither truly wanted but both would be fine with if it meant being together. 

But now they were seperated. According to Michael, separated by alternate dimensions. That was the kind of separation that you don't bounce back from.

Cass needed Dean. And Sam wasn't being any help driving out all by himself.

A little after ten he got a call on his phone. He hadn't started driving yet, the engine was still shut off and he was still just sitting in the car, head resting on the wheel. It was Cass, so he answered.

"Okay now, before you say anything, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left when Michael came. I'm about a days drive and I'll be there first thing in the morning."

"Aw boo Sammy, you know I won't be awake for that!" The cheery voice that came over the speaker made Sam drop his phone. He quickly scrambled to pick it up off the seat.

"Dean? Is that… is that really you?"

"Of course it is Sammy. I'm sorry I've been gone, I'm sorry about everything."

"Dammit Dean I don't care where the hell you've been! You're back. That's all that matters."

"It matters a lot. I've missed you Sam."

"I've missed you too. More than I can say."

"Aw, you're such a softie."

"Shut up you jerk!" Sam was laughing through an uncontrollable amount of tears.

"Make me, bitch." Dean's voice was laughing too. "Look, I'll call you back later, but I only have about forty-five minutes before I have to say goodbye to Michael and there's a lot I have to tell him."

"Of course. Hey, Dean, I love you."

"I love you too, little brother."

-

"Raphael was a good brother." Michael said solemnly as Dean finished his story.

The three were sitting in the kitchen, Cass and Michael across from Dean. Michael noticed how the two idiots were almost subconsciously trying to be near each other. Cass's arm was sprawled across the table "resting" but he saw it as a perhaps unconscious reach out to Dean across from him. And Dean was even more obvious, though apparently not to Cass. Dean spoke with his hands, and he would constantly grab at Cass's hand for different parts of his story. At one point Dean literally walked his fingers along the top of Cass's hand and Cass turned his hand palm up as Dean continued to walk his fingers on his palm, while describing his walk to and from hell. Michael wanted to laugh at how these two had spent a lot of time telling him that they didn't think the other liked them back.

Michael enjoyed seeing the two together. It was like a puzzle that finally pieced itself together again. He heard Dean rave about Cass for a month, and then he got three days of seeing Cass's grief at losing Dean. Now, seeing them together just made him happy because he knew they were probably happy for the first time in a while.

"I can't believe Crowley, the King of Hell, Crowley, broke my Lance." Michael was quite frankly shocked at that part. 

"Without him I never would have gotten back here." Dean admitted.

Dean's hand was also resting on the table, his fingertips less than an inch from Cass's, and Michael tried to hide his smile as he saw Cass instinctively brush his fingers atop Dean's when he said that.

When would these two open their damn eyes?

"What happened to Castiel? You've hardly said anything about what happened between you sending me through the rift and Raphael's rescue."

Dean's hand pulled away from Cass's quickly as a dark look ran over his face. Cass frowned, guilt and fury in his eyes. Michael didn't really want to bring up Castiel, but it was bothering him. He was sure that if Cass met Castiel, it wouldn't be pretty.

"It's fine. Nothing really happened, and Kevin killed him before I came back from Hell."

He could see Cass shift uncomfortably, because it was obvious to both that something happened when Dean walked into the ballroom without Michael.

"Dean, what aren't you saying?" Cass's voice was small, and Dean looked at him, desperate to not have to say anything else.

"It wasn't you, Cass, I know that."

"Dean, what did he do?" Cass's voice was unwavering and his stare was unrelenting. Michael was glad that he was not on the receiving end of it.

Dean let out a small sigh before quietly saying, "Raphael healed me, so it's over."

Cass stood up quickly, and both men jumped. The angel's expression was a dark mix of devastation and rage, and both Dean and Michael tried to remind themselves that this was Cass, not Castiel.

"What did he do to you?" Cass's voice was compassionate but it was demanding and terrifying.

"Cass, it wasn't-"

"Dean, answer him." Michael warned, just as angry with that alternate Castiel as Cass, or at least close.

Dean looked between the two, his eyes begging them to drop it, but Cass remained standing, looming over the two, and Michael glared at Dean as if threatening him to argue one more time. He let out a defeated sigh. "He roughed me up a bit."

"Dean. What did he do?" Cass's deep voice came out as less of a question and more of a sentence, and the amount of anger in it reminded Michael of himself.

Dean rolled his eyes, genuinely upset at being forced to say the details, but seeing no other options. "Zachariah basically told him to go at it. They were so sure that they had won that they decided to have fun rather than torture me or Kevin for information on the Lance. What… he did…" Dean couldn't bring himself to use Cass's name. "It wasn't very creative. He just beat my head into the floor. A lot." He looked at Cass and Michael and neither seemed satisfied. "He beat my head into the wood floor over and over with no emotion in his eyes and if Raph hadn't come to heal me I'm not sure I'd ever recover from that much head trauma. Happy now?!" Dean was getting angrier as he went on, not wanting to have to tell them any of this.

Cass looked about ready to explode. His whole body was shaking and they could feel a slight rumble in the room, so Dean was quick to his feet and he grabbed Cass's hand with both of his own.

"Cass please, it wasn't you. I know it wasn't you." Dean pleaded, trying to bring the angel down from his fury.

"Dean…"

"No, goddammit, look at me Cass!" This time it was Dean's turn to command the room with his voice. It came out angry and deep and intense. "Don't do this to me, okay? You would never do what he did. Never."

"I've hurt you before." This time Cass's voice had less power, it sounded more tired than anything.

"Yeah, and I've hurt you. But they were both when we were not ourselves. Cass, you would never hurt me." That line seemed to snap Cass out of it and back into where they were. "You would never, ever hurt me. That man who hurt me, who hurt Kevin, I didn't look at him and see you Cass. You were here the whole time. And it wasn't you who did those things."

Cass nodded at him, but before he could say anything else, they heard the familiar crackle come from the hall.

Dean let go of Cass's hand and it was obvious neither were really too happy to leave the conversation on the unfinished note, but Michael put that behind him as he walked to the hallway to look at his door home.

"Hour's up, buddy. Are you ready to go home?" Dean smiled over at the archangel. Michael nodded vigorously.

"Dean, why don't you go first."

"Wait, you're going back?" Cass's voice sounded terrified behind them.

Dean attempted a reassuring smile. "I'll be back in like five minutes, Cass, relax!" But Cass did not look keen on relaxing. 

"What if it closes again? What if you get stuck there again?"

"Cass, it won't-"

"Dean, go ahead of me." Michael interrupted, his voice challenging anyone to argue with him. He was still the archangel here, so Cass grumbled and Dean disappeared through the rift.

"Michael, why did you-"

"Cass, can I give you some parting advice? Tell him the truth." Michael was now completely ignoring the little argument that Dean and Cass were coasting off of. Cass tilted his head a bit, taken aback by Michael's words. "You got him back. So don't go back to the way it was, tell him the truth. No matter what he feels. You owe him your honesty."

Cass nodded steely at him. "You're right." His voice came out more like a sigh. "I'm fighting him so much already and he's only been back for an hour."

Michael put a hand on Cass's shoulder. "You're a great guy. If Dean doesn't love you, he's insane." And with that Michael went through the rift himself.

-

The first thing Michael was greeted with was Kevin Tran wrapping his arms around him and squeezing him tightly, burying his head in his shoulder. Michael was very happy to hug him back, thrilled to see him alive and well.

Michael shot Dean a glance that meant so many things as he held onto Kevin in his arms. And Dean knew exactly what it all meant. It was this gratefulness that Michael couldn't put in words.

Kevin pulled away and then immediately launched himself at Dean, the two of them falling onto the motel bed and laughing.

"Dammit Dean, we're going to miss you so much." Kevin said as Dean messed up his hair. "Ever since you bargained for me back in the ballroom a month ago, I've just wanted to make you proud."

"And you have. Now you have the Impala and Michael, you have everything you need. And you don't owe the world a thing, you can do whatever you want."

Kevin smiled at him brightly. "I wish you could stay, but I would never want to take you away from your family. Just, don't get mad if I pop over every once in a while to bother you."

"Me too." Michael shot him a cheeky smile.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Come here, you!" Michael just shook his head and walked into Dean's open arms. It only took a second before Kevin had joined them by squishing himself in the middle and the three sat down in their hug and stayed there for a minute.

Dean packed up some of the things he had amassed staying there and got ready to walk back to the rift, saying goodbye to this world for a while.

"Wait, Dean!" Michael grabbed his arm and pulled Dean's head in so he could whisper in his ear. "You are going to go home and tell that worried little angel of yours that you are in love with him or I will purposefully seek out Crowley and send him to bother you in the bunker." He pulled away just as Kevin's "no fair!" Hit their ears.

Dean's eyes were wide after hearing the threat that was probably only half-joking. "I will. I promise." He squeezed Michael's arm one last time and brushed his hand on Kevin's jaw lovingly before going into the rift.

In the motel the rift disappeared with a satisfying pop. "Come on Michael, what did you whisper to him?" Kevin whined.

"Oh, there's a lot of Dean drama to fill you in on, Kev."

-

Cass had been leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen a few feet from the rift for five minutes. Every second he was here and Dean was there made his skin crawl, even though he had been assured Dean was safe and that the threats were gone.

He wouldn't relax until it was just him and Dean with no rifts in between.

When Dean resurfaced after those excruciating minutes, Cass didn't want to fight anymore. "Dean, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you about-" but Dean had already wrapped Cass into another hug.

Though he was surprised, Cass wasn't going to complain about another excuse to be pressed up against him, just being aware that he existed.

Dean took a deep breath in of Cass's scent, still unable to see his face in this hug, as he finally said "I love you, Cass."

Cass pulled away quickly to look at Dean's face in surprise. Dean scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly, but he wasn't about to backpedal this far in. "I mean it like, I'm in love with you. And I know it's weird and I'm sorry if it makes you-"

Cass didn't waste another second as he leaned in and kissed Dean Winchester. He felt like he had been waiting to do that forever. 

Dean was caught off guard and wasn't kissing him back, so Cass jerked his head away. He looked panicked and began opening his mouth to stutter off some apology when Dean grabbed him by the trenchcoat with both hands and yanked him to him, kissing him with all the passion, fear, guilt, honesty, intimidation, and joy of the last twelve years, the love that he felt only having grown in the month he was taken from him.

Cass pushed Dean against the doorframe and just kissed him, one hand tangled in his hair, holding his head against his. He had wanted to do this for a very long time, incredibly long, and it felt perfect. Dean was here, with him, he belonged to him, and he didn't have to worry about Dean not loving him the same, because now he knew.

"I love you, Dean." Cass finally said. "I've loved you for a long time and I just didn't know how to say it."

His words prompted Dean to throw himself at the angel, his angel, once again, and Cass caught him in his arms quickly and lifted him in the air. Dean had to wrap his legs around Cass as they kissed and Cass carried him through the hall and to the couch in the den, the last place he saw Dean before he disappeared.

They ended up tangled up together on the couch when they were done, with Dean's head on Cass's lap and Cass mindlessly running his hands through Dean's hair, while Dean was humming something softly.

"You know, I'm glad Michael's so full of himself." Dean mumbled. Cass paused stroking his hair to ask him what he was talking about, but Dean let out a small whimper in protest and Cass went back to it. "Michael's the only person I ever told about how much I love you." He saw a big smile form on Cass's face to hear him say he loved him again. "He told me I should tell you, practically threatened me if I didn't when I said goodbye."

Cass laughed. That unbelievable archangel. "He guessed that I was in love with you pretty quickly. Told me I should tell you."

Dean started laughing, so much that he drew his knees to his chest. "I can't believe how we tortured that poor angel. He must have thought we were so stupid."

Cass started laughing with him. "We kind of were, weren't we."

Dean reached a hand up to cup Cass's face. "It was worth it though, right?"

Cass smiled down at him, brushing his fingers back and forth on the hunter's cheek. "Anything is worth it, anything is worth you."

Dean shut his eyes and burrowed his head closer to Cass's stomach happily. "I should probably eventually get up to get food. It's been a while."

Cass laughed as if he was having some inside joke with himself. "Maybe you can teach me how to make a sandwich."

Dean opened one eye and stared at the angel above his face curiously. "Do I want to know?"

Cass bent down and kissed his forehead. "Long story."

-

When Sam got home the next morning he found Dean and Cass lying on the couch, Cass having his arms wrapped around Dean as Dean was curled up into his lap, his head burrowed in Cass's chest.

Sam paused and raised an eyebrow at Cass, who was not asleep, who just smiled at him. Sam shook his head, stifling a laugh as he let Dean sleep.

That night they settled in to watch Tombstone again, and Dean sat between Cass and Sam as usual, but this time he was lying sideways on the couch, his legs draped over Sam's laugh occasionally kicking him, and his head on Cass's lap, who couldn't possibly be happier with the position Dean chose.

They got to the part of the movie they had been at a month ago and Sam smiled to himself. "Okay Dean, I'll admit, you might just be a cowboy."

Dean threw his head back, which just threw his whole self onto Cass as he started laughing. 

"It was a poncho though." Cass couldn't help but add.

"Truer words were never spoken."

Dean stared between his boyfriend and his brother. "Absolutely unbelievable. Maybe I should go get some beers like last time."

"No!" They both shouted, maybe a bit too seriously. For the rest of the movie, Sam pressed his elbows on top of Dean's legs, basically pinning them down, and Cass had one arm over Dean's chest and the other in his hair again.

Curiosity had always been Dean Winchester's problem. But right now he had all the answers he'd been missing for a long ass time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of posted almost the whole thing in one burst so her you go!


End file.
